Why Women Fight Against ISIS
- 10 years ago
Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review. A former CNN producer and correspondent, she is the author of "The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television." Follow her on Twitter
Just when you thought it was impossible for ISIS to become any more contemptible, the group in its latest
We didn't need a new propaganda effort from the self-appointed Islamic State to know the nightmare that has befallen women in territories captured by its fighters. Now we've had a look at the twisted logic that rationalizes sexual exploitation, killing and enslavement of women and young girls.
Is it any wonder then that women in Iraq and Syria have moved to the forefront of the war against ISIS? They have taken up arms, organized civil protests and warned the world about the threat that ISIS poses.
Frida Ghitis
A woman is
One reason they fight is that women have more to lose than anyone else.
For a time, the rumors seemed so extreme, so outlandish, that they were met with a dose of skepticism: Talk of slave markets, mass kidnappings, women treated as spoils of war distributed among the victorious fighters, sounded like tales from a historic account, not of a 21st-century conflict.
But in 2014, using the Internet, ISIS described what it did with members of Iraq's Yazidi minority: "After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to Sharia amongst the fighters of the Islamic State. ," The explanation included "scholarly analysis" to justIt seems pointless to discuss religious doctrine with a group determined to kill its way into the imposition of seventh-century norms more than 1,400 years after they were written. A number of top Muslim clerics have
ISIS, in contrast, finds slavery and the holding of concubines a beneficial practice, writing that "a number of contemporary scholars" say the end of slavery has led to an increase in "adultery, fornication, etc."
The latest publication confirms what human rights investigators and survivors of ISIS have reported. The United Nations says slave markets now operate in Raqqa, the ISIS "capital" in Syria, and in Mosul, until recently a modern city in Iraq.
U.N. investigators interviewed witnesses, who told of women taken captive by ISIS, sexually abused and handed to slave traders. The United Nations estimates there are at least 2,500 victims. Others say the number may be much higher.
When Kurdish forces recaptured Mosul Dam, they reportedly said they found a
Just like the publicized beheading of captives has a strategic purpose, the treatment of women as battlefield loot is a way of enticing new recruits.
But it is also a powerful motivation for women to join the fight.
In the battle over Kobani, just across the border from Turkey, ground troops are led by two top officers of the YPG, the Kurdish People's Protection Units. One of them is a woman, Mayssa Abdo, known in the battlefield as Narin Afrin.
Just when you thought it was impossible for ISIS to become any more contemptible, the group in its latest
We didn't need a new propaganda effort from the self-appointed Islamic State to know the nightmare that has befallen women in territories captured by its fighters. Now we've had a look at the twisted logic that rationalizes sexual exploitation, killing and enslavement of women and young girls.
Is it any wonder then that women in Iraq and Syria have moved to the forefront of the war against ISIS? They have taken up arms, organized civil protests and warned the world about the threat that ISIS poses.
Frida Ghitis
A woman is
One reason they fight is that women have more to lose than anyone else.
For a time, the rumors seemed so extreme, so outlandish, that they were met with a dose of skepticism: Talk of slave markets, mass kidnappings, women treated as spoils of war distributed among the victorious fighters, sounded like tales from a historic account, not of a 21st-century conflict.
But in 2014, using the Internet, ISIS described what it did with members of Iraq's Yazidi minority: "After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to Sharia amongst the fighters of the Islamic State. ," The explanation included "scholarly analysis" to justIt seems pointless to discuss religious doctrine with a group determined to kill its way into the imposition of seventh-century norms more than 1,400 years after they were written. A number of top Muslim clerics have
ISIS, in contrast, finds slavery and the holding of concubines a beneficial practice, writing that "a number of contemporary scholars" say the end of slavery has led to an increase in "adultery, fornication, etc."
The latest publication confirms what human rights investigators and survivors of ISIS have reported. The United Nations says slave markets now operate in Raqqa, the ISIS "capital" in Syria, and in Mosul, until recently a modern city in Iraq.
U.N. investigators interviewed witnesses, who told of women taken captive by ISIS, sexually abused and handed to slave traders. The United Nations estimates there are at least 2,500 victims. Others say the number may be much higher.
When Kurdish forces recaptured Mosul Dam, they reportedly said they found a
Just like the publicized beheading of captives has a strategic purpose, the treatment of women as battlefield loot is a way of enticing new recruits.
But it is also a powerful motivation for women to join the fight.
In the battle over Kobani, just across the border from Turkey, ground troops are led by two top officers of the YPG, the Kurdish People's Protection Units. One of them is a woman, Mayssa Abdo, known in the battlefield as Narin Afrin.