Women in war, some changes on the battlefield
Hello everyone,
I have not been updating the blog for a while. I am sorry about that. The good news is I have been working on several new projects, some of those I hope to show you quite soon.
First of all let me tell you what I have been producing lately. For the website War Is Boring I wrote about Maria Giulia Sergio, aka Fatima. The 27 years-old became the first known Italian woman who has joined ISIS. She left her home town, few miles from Milan, in October 2014, and fled to Syria, where now she is a proud Jihadi bride. While living in the Islamic State she tried to convince her family to join her. Her parents and sister got arrested in one of the most important anti-terrorist operation against IS in Italy. If you want to know about her story, this is the link.
In the meantime I gathered even more evidence on ISIS women fighting on the front lines. I have been showed a picture of women killed on the battlefields around Kobane, at the height of the fight. The person who took this picture doesn’t want it to go public. They were dressed in uniform and not wearing a niqab, they tried to blend in with male jihadi. There are three bodies amongst a group of seven. Also other YPG foreign fighters claimed to have a killed women fighting with Daesh. I will keep you updated on that.
On the opposite front, few weeks ago I wrote for Quartz about how the YJA -Star is very keen on wearing their femininity with pride.Even on the battlefield. The all female unit affiliated to the PKK has been fighting in Sinjar since August 2014. Unlike most of the army around the world, the Kurds see femininity as a strength not a weakness. This attitude is so different from the one in the US Army, for instance, where the first two female graduating from the Ranger course (by the way congrats!) seem to have shocked public opinion. To be fair, most of the people complaining about it are Vietnam veterans, because the younger generation seems to be more open about it.
In any case, I hope you had a good summer and I will keep you posted one new stories!
(Picture by Sulaiman Othman )
