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| Terror Networks |
| Female Kurdish fighters battling ISIS win Israeli hearts |
| 2015-03-06 |
| [RUDAW.NET] On December 22, Israelis sat down before their TV sets to watch the popular investigative news program "Uvda," or Fact. They saw a familiar personage in Itai Anghel, well-known to Israelis for his reports from war zones around the world, including Kosovo, Afghanistan, Leb and Iraq. This time Anghel was reporting from the frontlines of the war with the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... (ISIS), focusing on the role of the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). His report on the Kurdish fighters made a splash: Israelis were especially captivated by the female fighters of the YPJ, the YPG's women's wing. As a liberal democracy in a part of the world where women's rights are routinely violated -- if they exist at all -- Israel takes pride in the status of women in the Jewish state. In the Israel Defense Forces women fulfill a variety of combat roles, including as fighter pilots, in combat intelligence and light infantry. But to see women from another Middle Eastern nation fighting -- and defeating -- ISIS in entirely female fighting units was remarkable. Israelis saw proud, young female Kurdish fighters going in to battle ISIS with no discernable hesitation. In fact, they even announced their presence with ululations, meant to strike fear into the hearts of the jihadists, who believe they will be deprived of heaven if killed by a woman. One female Israeli artist was so inspired by the Kurdish fighters that she painted a picture of Medya, a senior YPJ commander featured in the news report and asked Anghel to send it to her. The TV report, narrated by Anghel, showed him crossing the Euphrates River into Syria and being welcomed by Kurdish guides in Syrian Kurdistan, known to Kurds as Rojava. "Daesh shoot and kill everything that moves, and are taking control across the region, and the world stammers," he narrated, using the name Arabs have given to ISIS. "We are now seeing the story through the eyes of the only fighters who have succeeded in stopping them: the Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq." The YPG has been fighting ISIS in Syria, while the Kurdistan Region's Peshmerga forces have been a bulwark against the forces of Evil in Iraq. Both forces sometimes cooperate, as the Peshmerga did in evicting ISIS from the Syrian city of Kobane more than a month ago. "Are you afraid of Daesh?" viewers saw Anghel ask a female fighter named Ahin. "No, the opposite. They are afraid of us," she replied with a grin. "We are the nightmare of Daesh. I'm waiting for them." Indeed, one captured ISIS terrorist told Anghel that when the female fighters approached, the jihadi commanders ordered their men back so they would not get killed by women. Anghel's report gave a particular focus to the female fighters, especially the commander Medya, whom the news hound first met in 2010 on the Turkish-Iraqi border. Though she is one of the top targets for ISIS, she isn't especially fazed by the group. "You visited us in the past and saw how we operate against countries that are supposed to be bigger and stronger than us," she told Anghel on camera. "Listen: whoever thinks of them as a powerful military force simply falls into the Daesh propaganda trap. The truth is they are not such mighty fighters. They don't have the bravery and fighting spirit that they show in the propaganda videos." Medya told Anghel that she felt a special responsibility toward her female fighters --- to keep them from falling into ISIS hands, to free female prisoners and to avenge what the jihadists have done to women. "For these types, even hell isn't enough of a punishment. Our job is to make sure they get a one-way ticket there," she said. |
| Posted by:Fred |