Tag: Kurdistan

Women who join ISIS, are they really just victims?

The teenager who joined ISIS

Marlin was 15 years-old when she decided to travel to Syria last May.  She grew up in Boras,  Sweden. She wanted to join the Islamic State with her boyfriend and be part of the jihad. According  to Swedish press, when she traveled to the Islamic State, she was also pregnant. Allegedly she got “mislead” by an ISIS recruiter in Sweden who convinced her to make the journey.

On February 17 she got rescued by Kurdish anti-terrorist force, CTD, during a raid in Mosul. The girl, who is now 16,  is in Kurdistan and she will be hand over to Swedish authority. Her boyfriend, most probably at this point husband, got killed by a Russian airstrike. It is unclear what the girl was doing in Mosul, and why she was moved there.

A statement from the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) said the family was informed of the human rescue mission.

Most of the articles that have been published so far emphasis the “misleading” part, treating this girl as a victim. There is a sense of pity around them, as if we are unable to process their choice, so we tend to believe someone else forced them into the jihad. Some girls maybe so, but not all of them.

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One day with the YPJ Sniper Unit in Rojava, Syria

I went to Rojava, Syria, where I was able to meet with YPG (People’s Defense Unit) and YPJ (Women’s Defense Unit) and understand better about their fight against the Islamic State.
A version of this article was published by Reuters Foundation and you can find it here.

TIL KOCHER (Syria) – A Makarov, a semi-automatic Russian pistol, is hanging next to a blue flower clock on an empty wall mounted coat rack. Her owner left it there for the night while sleeping in the one bedroom apartment on the second floor of an empty building in Til-Kocher, on the Syrian border with Iraq. Til-Kocher is one of the most strategic bases for the YPG, the Kurdish People Protection’s Army, in their war against ISIS.

Arin, a 27 years-old woman from Germany, was awarded the gun when she got twenty confirmed ISIS kills. That was months ago. Now, her Havel (Comrades and friends in Kurdish) claim she is one of the most dangerous snipers in the war against the Daesh, as they call Islamic State fighters.

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Letter from Kurdistan-2 “Look how my family is living”

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“Look how my family is living”

These pictures were sent to me on Wednesday evening. They were taken in Zakho, Iraq. The town, which is in the Kurdistan region, is at the border with Turkey and it is currently hosting several Yazidi families who escaped from ISIS in the Sinjar area. Thousands of them just want to leave Iraq for good. “We don’t have any future here. We are not muslim and we will always be harassed” said Fahrani over the phone from an IDP camp.

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A letter from Kurdistan: “Yazidi beaten up by security forces while demanding help”

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As previously reported, Yazidi who were able to escape from Mount Sinjar are in Kurdistan. They did not leave their problem behind and their struggle is far from over. They are actually facing a humanitarian crisis.  In the Kurdistan Region there are more than 300,000 Yazidi refugees but there is no external support. There are no camps and thousands sleep on the streets hoping to leave Iraq as soon as possible. “We are not safe here,” they claimed. The news flow from Kurdistan is slow and sporadic. There is a growing tension in cities such as Zakho and Dohuk, at the Turkish border, said Farhan a former US Army interpreter.

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Benedetta Argentieri

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