Kurdish women commandos

last updated 8 January 2015

Sulaymaniyah, Iraq

Soldiers in the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq are training an elite military force with unusual members: women. Hundreds of young Kurdish women have lost a husband, father, or brother to the Iraqi regime, and they are angry enough to take up arms. Many of them are victims of Saddam Hussein’s ethnic-cleansing campaign, which has driven 800,000 Kurds to the north in the past few decades. So far, the women’s force numbers only 300 trained fighters, just a sliver of a total of 50,000 Kurdish troops. But more are practicing with their Soviet-made rifles. “Women also make good fighters,” one trainee told the London Guardian. “We’re just as brave as the men.”