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A Third of Kurdish Fighters Are Women, Defying Mideast Attitudes and Altering Kurdish Society
When 19-year-old Dilar and her girlfriends learned last spring that a woman who taught at a local school had died fighting Islamic State, they made a pact: They would join an all-female Syrian Kurdish brigade named in the teacher’s honor.
Her unit, the Martyr Warsin Brigade, saw action this summer in a tough battle against the extremist fighters for Ras al-Ayn, a town along the Turkish border. Dilar came away without injury and returned home to a hero’s welcome.
Now, during her downtime, she and her female comrades stride with a swagger through their villages east of the embattled city of Kobani.
“When I walk with my gun, the men who haven’t volunteered keep their eyes down around me,” said Dilar, who didn’t want to give her family name. “My bravery shames them.”
As debate flares in Washington and other capitals about whether the battle against Islamic State can succeed without more boots—even U.S. ones—on the ground, Kurdish women have stepped up to defend their lands in Syria and Iraq. An estimated one-third of the Syrian Kurdish fighters in Kobani are women, fighters and residents say, a figure that mirrors their role in other significant battles across Kurdish territories this year.
The monthlong battle over the city on the Turkish border is straining Islamic State, Kurdish politicians and U.S. officials say, and hampering its overall expansion strategy.
The overriding motivation that Kurds give for fighting the insurgents is to save their ancestral homeland from destruction. Yet many women combatants also cite a more personal crusade. Across the territory in Syria and Iraq that it now controls, Islamic State has reinstituted slavery, prohibited women from working and threatened to kill those Muslims, including Kurds, who don’t adhere to their ideology.
“Islamic State are terrorists, inhuman,” said a 28-year-old female commander of both men and women in Kobani who uses the nom-de-guerre Afsin Kobane.
Ms. Kobane was a kindergarten teacher when she decided last year to join the female unit of the Syrian Kurdish resistance force, known as YPJ. Speaking by telephone from her post in the besieged city on the Turkish border, she said her mixed-gender unit had been fighting for more than a month and was holding a position only a half-mile from Islamic State fighters.
The pressure of being under siege has largely broken the normal cultural barriers between men and women, Ms. Kobane said. “Really we have no differences,” she said. “We do what the men do.”
Any awkwardness pales in the face of the life-and-death challenges of winning skirmishes against Islamic State foes in the most dangerous eastern suburbs of Kobani, where Islamic State first entered the city, Ms. Kobane said. “Sometimes we are so close to them without knowing it, because they hide in empty buildings,” she said.
Women in battle shock many in traditional corners of the Middle East, but among Kurds the female warriors have drawn acclaim in poems and on Facebook. FB +4.57%
Kurdish society is hardly a bastion of feminism, but across the wider region, Kurds—who are ethnically and linguistically distinct from Arabs or Turks—are relatively progressive. That is partly a reflection of the leftist and Marxist political ideology that has influenced the Kurds’ decadeslong struggle for independence in Turkey and Iraq.
Among the prominent Kurds espousing equality has been Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, who is in jail in Turkey after being convicted of treason but whose influence extends to Kurdish communities in Syria and Iraq. The PKK, as well as the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, have had women’s brigades in their guerrilla forces for decades.
Many Kurdish women’s rights activists have criticized Mr. Ocalan and other Kurdish leaders as only paying lip service to their cause, pointing to the male-dominated military and political hierarchies of Kurdish society that in practice keep women shut out from leadership positions.
Now, the prowess of Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish women fighters is straining, if not breaking, that glass ceiling.
Tales of Kurdish female valor have become so prevalent that Kurdish leaders use them as recruiting tools. “When you fight a lion, it doesn’t matter if it’s a male or female,” said Saadi Pera, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Iraqi Kurdish party whose Peshmerga are among those defending frontline positions across northern Iraq.
Dilar’s unit, which is based east of Kobani in the countryside around Qamshili, has been together since the spring of 2013. Though she was raised on tales of heroic Kurdish guerrilla leaders and her father was already serving in a unit fighting Islamic State, Dilar worried that her traditional parents wouldn’t approve of their daughter taking up arms. So last spring she sneaked out from home while her father was away and later informed them by text them that she had signed up for the Martyr Warsin Brigade.
“She died for us and our freedom,” Dilar said, referring to the teacher, Warsin. “We wanted to honor her and to protect our families.”
Dramatic tales of female heroism are frequently aired in Kurdish cafes and on social media.
One such tale recounts the death of a Syrian fighter, identified as Arin Mirkan. When she was running out of ammunition, she reportedly sacrificed herself and detonated a grenade that killed several enemies during a running battle. The details of the incident could not be independently verified.
Nigar Hussain was killed in Iraqi Kurdistan in late September while helping to defend Iraqi oil installations near the city of Kirkuk against Islamic State, according to Kurdish-language media.
Ms. Hussain was still in high school when she joined the Peshmerga, inspired by her father’s experience as a guerrilla and in defiance of her mother’s protests. “She told me to kiss her once again before she left home, despite the fact I was angry at her,” her mother said. “I told her don’t think about dying. Think about killing four or five of them [the enemy] first. That was the last time I saw her.”
While they talk of battlefield glory, Kurdish women, like men, are also having to grapple with the trauma of violence and death.
At a makeshift cemetery along the Turkish-Syria border, Kurdish refugees and families gathered earlier this week to grieve for female fighters killed in Kobani.
Four corpses buried together this week along the narrow, hand-furrowed rows were women. About 30% of the red, hand-painted cement gravestones at the site bear female names such as Zozan, Rocin, Lezgin and Bengin.
Ms. Kobane said the greatest horror she has witnessed was the death of her friend Viyan, who signed up to fight alongside her.
In a street battle with Islamic State on the western edge of town, Viyan and three male fighters were surrounded and cut down by their foes. Islamic State fighters then beheaded the four corpses and took their heads as war trophies, she said.
“They took the heads to Jarablus and showed them around there, to brag about their advances in Kobani. You can’t imagine such things,” Ms. Kobane said, her voice close to breaking.
Instead of sapping her morale, her friend’s death has increased her determination to fight. “We always told each other, Viyan and I, not to forget what we were fighting for, no matter what happened to us,” she said. “I will never forget those words.”
If she survives the battle for Kobani, Ms. Kobane said she knows her battlefield experience will alter her life forever.
“After this, I can’t imagine leading a life of a traditional Kurdish woman, caring for a husband and children at home,” she said. “I used to want that before this war.”
When 19-year-old Dilar and her girlfriends learned last spring that a woman who taught at a local school had died fighting Islamic State, they made a pact: They would join an all-female Syrian Kurdish brigade named in the teacher’s honor.
Her unit, the Martyr Warsin Brigade, saw action this summer in a tough battle against the extremist fighters for Ras al-Ayn, a town along the Turkish border. Dilar came away without injury and returned home to a hero’s welcome.
Now, during her downtime, she and her female comrades stride with a swagger through their villages east of the embattled city of Kobani.
“When I walk with my gun, the men who haven’t volunteered keep their eyes down around me,” said Dilar, who didn’t want to give her family name. “My bravery shames them.”
As debate flares in Washington and other capitals about whether the battle against Islamic State can succeed without more boots—even U.S. ones—on the ground, Kurdish women have stepped up to defend their lands in Syria and Iraq. An estimated one-third of the Syrian Kurdish fighters in Kobani are women, fighters and residents say, a figure that mirrors their role in other significant battles across Kurdish territories this year.
The monthlong battle over the city on the Turkish border is straining Islamic State, Kurdish politicians and U.S. officials say, and hampering its overall expansion strategy.
The overriding motivation that Kurds give for fighting the insurgents is to save their ancestral homeland from destruction. Yet many women combatants also cite a more personal crusade. Across the territory in Syria and Iraq that it now controls, Islamic State has reinstituted slavery, prohibited women from working and threatened to kill those Muslims, including Kurds, who don’t adhere to their ideology.
“Islamic State are terrorists, inhuman,” said a 28-year-old female commander of both men and women in Kobani who uses the nom-de-guerre Afsin Kobane.
Ms. Kobane was a kindergarten teacher when she decided last year to join the female unit of the Syrian Kurdish resistance force, known as YPJ. Speaking by telephone from her post in the besieged city on the Turkish border, she said her mixed-gender unit had been fighting for more than a month and was holding a position only a half-mile from Islamic State fighters.
The pressure of being under siege has largely broken the normal cultural barriers between men and women, Ms. Kobane said. “Really we have no differences,” she said. “We do what the men do.”
Any awkwardness pales in the face of the life-and-death challenges of winning skirmishes against Islamic State foes in the most dangerous eastern suburbs of Kobani, where Islamic State first entered the city, Ms. Kobane said. “Sometimes we are so close to them without knowing it, because they hide in empty buildings,” she said.
Women in battle shock many in traditional corners of the Middle East, but among Kurds the female warriors have drawn acclaim in poems and on Facebook. FB +4.57%
Kurdish society is hardly a bastion of feminism, but across the wider region, Kurds—who are ethnically and linguistically distinct from Arabs or Turks—are relatively progressive. That is partly a reflection of the leftist and Marxist political ideology that has influenced the Kurds’ decadeslong struggle for independence in Turkey and Iraq.
Among the prominent Kurds espousing equality has been Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, who is in jail in Turkey after being convicted of treason but whose influence extends to Kurdish communities in Syria and Iraq. The PKK, as well as the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, have had women’s brigades in their guerrilla forces for decades.
Many Kurdish women’s rights activists have criticized Mr. Ocalan and other Kurdish leaders as only paying lip service to their cause, pointing to the male-dominated military and political hierarchies of Kurdish society that in practice keep women shut out from leadership positions.
Now, the prowess of Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish women fighters is straining, if not breaking, that glass ceiling.
Tales of Kurdish female valor have become so prevalent that Kurdish leaders use them as recruiting tools. “When you fight a lion, it doesn’t matter if it’s a male or female,” said Saadi Pera, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Iraqi Kurdish party whose Peshmerga are among those defending frontline positions across northern Iraq.
Dilar’s unit, which is based east of Kobani in the countryside around Qamshili, has been together since the spring of 2013. Though she was raised on tales of heroic Kurdish guerrilla leaders and her father was already serving in a unit fighting Islamic State, Dilar worried that her traditional parents wouldn’t approve of their daughter taking up arms. So last spring she sneaked out from home while her father was away and later informed them by text them that she had signed up for the Martyr Warsin Brigade.
“She died for us and our freedom,” Dilar said, referring to the teacher, Warsin. “We wanted to honor her and to protect our families.”
Dramatic tales of female heroism are frequently aired in Kurdish cafes and on social media.
One such tale recounts the death of a Syrian fighter, identified as Arin Mirkan. When she was running out of ammunition, she reportedly sacrificed herself and detonated a grenade that killed several enemies during a running battle. The details of the incident could not be independently verified.
Nigar Hussain was killed in Iraqi Kurdistan in late September while helping to defend Iraqi oil installations near the city of Kirkuk against Islamic State, according to Kurdish-language media.
Ms. Hussain was still in high school when she joined the Peshmerga, inspired by her father’s experience as a guerrilla and in defiance of her mother’s protests. “She told me to kiss her once again before she left home, despite the fact I was angry at her,” her mother said. “I told her don’t think about dying. Think about killing four or five of them [the enemy] first. That was the last time I saw her.”
While they talk of battlefield glory, Kurdish women, like men, are also having to grapple with the trauma of violence and death.
At a makeshift cemetery along the Turkish-Syria border, Kurdish refugees and families gathered earlier this week to grieve for female fighters killed in Kobani.
Four corpses buried together this week along the narrow, hand-furrowed rows were women. About 30% of the red, hand-painted cement gravestones at the site bear female names such as Zozan, Rocin, Lezgin and Bengin.
Ms. Kobane said the greatest horror she has witnessed was the death of her friend Viyan, who signed up to fight alongside her.
In a street battle with Islamic State on the western edge of town, Viyan and three male fighters were surrounded and cut down by their foes. Islamic State fighters then beheaded the four corpses and took their heads as war trophies, she said.
“They took the heads to Jarablus and showed them around there, to brag about their advances in Kobani. You can’t imagine such things,” Ms. Kobane said, her voice close to breaking.
Instead of sapping her morale, her friend’s death has increased her determination to fight. “We always told each other, Viyan and I, not to forget what we were fighting for, no matter what happened to us,” she said. “I will never forget those words.”
If she survives the battle for Kobani, Ms. Kobane said she knows her battlefield experience will alter her life forever.
“After this, I can’t imagine leading a life of a traditional Kurdish woman, caring for a husband and children at home,” she said. “I used to want that before this war.”
They desperately want their old caliphate back. 
