ISIS women joining the frontline to fight

Something is changing in the Islamic State. Women travelling to Syria to join the terrorist group want to fight and they are travelling to the front lines in Iraq. This is the result of my latest reporting trip in Iraqi Kurdistan, where several military officials confirmed this new trend.

In Sinjar, one of the main front of the war against ISIS, both Peshmerga and YPJ told me about ISIS women having a very active role in the fight. I first talked to Beritan, a YJA Star brigade commander who heard a Daesh woman on the radio giving orders to men. “She was obviously a commander,” said Beritan while having a chai in her base in the outskirt of Sinjar city. Less than a hundred meters away Colonel Rafat Salim Raykoni said ISIS women are in Sinjar. “They are mainly snipers and work in logistic,” he added.

One soldier in Makhmoor, very close to Mosul, would not go on the record while describing a woman with a rifle shooting at his him in a sand-bagged fortification. Though Peshmerga Lieutenant Colonel Mofak Abet Fatallah said a female commander is believed to be in charge of Mahaba, a disputed village a few miles from the frontline. “She is Arabic and she in charge of twenty men. Amongst them also her two sons,” said the officer.  Most of the Peshmerga don’t want to talk about this new trend. Though experts think this shift might be the result of foreign fighters influence, such as the Chechen Islamist separatists who always had active women in their fight. Now thousands of them  have joined the Islamic State.

This is the article I wrote for Reuters Foundation and here the Italian version published by Corriere della Sera.