Meet The Kurdish Women Fighting ISIS

Female Peshmergas on their base at the
border between Syria and Iraq. These
female fighters are motivated by the words
of Abdullah Ocalan, head of the Kurdish
Workers’ Party (PKK), who promotes
Marxist thought and empowerment of
women. Source: Newsha Tavakolian/TIME

To an ISIS militant, one of the worst
things that could happen in combat is
not just being killed, but being killed by
a woman . If this happens, ISIS members
believe that they will go directly to hell.
If hell exists, rest assured that they
have been sent there by a number of
Kurdish women.
In August 2014, ISIS moved to the Sinjar
area of Iraq and began to persecute,
capture and kill its minority Yazidi
population–an ancient, mainly Kurdish
people. Female Kurdish soldiers were
instrumental in the Kurdish
counteroffensive, rescuing thousands of
Yazidis trapped by ISIS on Mount Sinjar.
The women have since extended their
fight against radical militants to Kobani,
Syria. See what life for these soldiers is
like in the gallery below:

Many of these Kurdish women compose
the female branch of the YPG militia,
which, along with PKK (a Kurdish
nationalist party) guerrillas and US-
backed peshmergas (recognized Kurdish
soldiers), have been fighting ISIS back
and providing humanitarian aid to local
populations for nearly the past year.
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Anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000 women
form the all-female branch of the YPG–
the YPJ–and are usually 18 to 25 years
old. Influenced by the Marxist-Leninist
thought of jailed PKK founder Abdullah
Ocalan, the Kurdish nationalist party
demands that gender equality be re-
instated, making women’s “liberation” a
key component of the party’s nationalist
project. Gains by ISIS, which seeks to
severely curtail the rights of women,
thus represents not just an international
security threat. To Kurdish nationalists,
it sets the dream of an independent
Kurdish state that much further in the
distance.

Kurdistan encompasses parts of Turkey,
Syria, Iraq and Iran, which makes its
people particularly vulnerable to the
conflicts engulfing the region–and stand
to benefit from a weakening Iraqi state.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire in the early 20th century, Allied
forces attempted to create several
countries within the empire’s former
boundaries, Kurdistan being one of
them.
This did not end up happening for a
number of reasons, and millions of
Kurds were left without a state of their
own. Since then, members of the PKK–
labeled a terrorist organization by the
United States, NATO and the European
Union, among others–have been
engaged in a long-standing fight with
Turkey, and are looking for ways to
gain international support for their
cause.
Beyond providing humanitarian
support, one such way seems to be
through pumping its female fighters to
the West. According to Jacob Russell, a
photojournalist who has lived in
Kurdistan for nearly two years, both
international media and Kurdish
politicians see the PR potential of “girls
with guns” and have objectified these
women, presenting a false, vaguely
glamorous reality to Western audiences
clamoring to see ISIS’ downfall–and
“empowered” women leading the fight.

Said Russell in an interview with CNN ,
“A lot of the women’s backstories were
quite difficult. It seemed like this unit
provided an alternative network for
women who maybe would struggle in
normal Kurdish society, because despite
being relatively progressive (within the
Middle East), it is still quite a
conservative society.”
Regardless of PKK political objectives,
many feminists praise the YPJ for
“confronting traditional gender
expectations in the region” and
“redefining the role of women in
conflict [there].” According to
photojournalist Erin Trieb , “the YPJ is in
itself a feminist movement, even if it is
not their main mission…they want
‘equality’ between women and men, and
a part of why they joined was to
develop and advance the perceptions
about women in their culture. They can
be strong and be leader.”
Perhaps put better by 18-year-old
Kurdish fighter Saria Zilan, “In the past,
women had various roles in the society,
but all those roles were taken from
them. We are here now to take back the
role of women in society.”
What becomes of ISIS and Kurdistan
remains to be seen. Rest assured,
though, that women will play a
substantial role in determining the fate
of both.