Mayssa Abdo aka Narin Afrin aka ISIL's Worst Nightmare
The SyrRaqqi War against ISIL is redefining the term "War On Women" as many women are taking leading roles in the fight against intolerant assholes who would stitch them into the seventh century.
(AFP) A Kurdish woman fighter is leading the battle against Islamic State jihadists in the Syrian battleground town of Kobane, a monitoring group and activists said Sunday.
"Mayssa Abdo, known by the nom-de-guerre of Narin Afrin, is commanding the YPG in Kobane along with Mahmud Barkhodan," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
The secular and left-leaning Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) group has been defending Kobane, on the border with Turkey, since Islamic State (IS) fighters launched an assault on September 16.
Women volunteers have long made up a considerable part of the Kurdish front line forces but they are proving a vexing problem for ISIL fighters. You see, to believe in the Islamists bastardized version of the Koran you need to believe that to die at the hand of a women in war means no ticket to paradise. ISIL forces who happily throw themselves into deaths way do so seeing a path to eternal happiness.
Abdo is hardly alone as a female fighter and, as others have shown on a daily basis, their roles have been as heroic and horrible as any man could contemplate.
(AFP) The young woman, a full-time fighter with the Syria-based Kurdish rebel group the People's Protection Units (YPG), killed herself in the attack on Sunday, Kurdish sources said. Her name in Kurdish was Dilar Gencxemis but she went under the nom-de-guerre of Arin Mirkan, the YPG said in a statement. She was from the Syrian town of Afrin in the Aleppo province of northern Syria, just south of the Turkish border.
With Kurdish fighters under increasing pressure from the ISIS militants seeking to seize Kobane, this is the first time a suicide bomber has been used by Kurdish forces in the conflict. "I don't know her exact age but she was above 20. She was a fighter from the YPG," said Mustafa Bali, a Kurdish official in Kobane told in the Turkish border town of Suruc.
"She threw many grenades at ISIS insurgents. After that, she blew herself up," he said, adding that dozens of ISIS fighters were killed in her assault.
The Britain-based Britain-based group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria, also confirmed the attack by the female suicide bomber.
I disagree with the writer's characterization of Mirkan as a "suicide bomber". Rather she was a kick ass soldier who charged into an enemy encampment lobbing grenades until she finally avoided capture with her last blast. Sounds like it would have been reported a lot differently if She were He. Regardless the Kurds have dismissed the idea of using a suicide strategy and it is the only instance we know of in Syria.
Perhaps one reason Turks would like to see the Syrian Kurds chopped up by Islamic State before they allow add and intervention in Kobane is because they fear the female empowerment as much as the threat of millions of Turkish Kurds wishing to join with an independent Kurdistan nation.
Women from around the muslim world are noticing and supporting. Women who are barred from public discussion in many muslim areas have taken to the streets in Kabul, Afghanistan in solidarity to the opposition to Islamic Statists.
(WSJ)
“Brave women and men of Kobani, we are with you,” a placard read.
But the conflict in Syria was on the minds of demonstrators who marched Sunday in solidarity with the town of Kobani, Syria, currently under siege by Islamic State militants.
Over a hundred Afghans—most of them women—held placards supporting Kurdish fighters defending the city.
At the end of the demonstration, protesters burned a flag symbolizing the group. But since Islamic State’s flag features the shahada, a Muslim profession of faith, the flag made by protesters instead featured a skull and crossbones, so it resembled a pirate flag.
“Death to Daesh,” protesters chanted, using the Arabic acronym used to refer to Islamic State.
While Islamic State hasn't made serious inroads in Afghanistan, Hafiz Rasikh, the head of the political department of the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan, said it was a threat to the region.
“The Islamic State is like a cancer,” said Tahira, who, like most Afghan women, goes by one name. “They have damaged the image of Islam.”
This kind of bold expression is exactly what Islamic Statists would consider an apostasy warranting a death sentence which they have meted out frequently. The list of Syrian and Iraqi women who have been put to horrible deaths for the crime of expression is long.
Perhaps the most unlikely support of female equality has come from the United Arab Emirates who have not only sent real jets on real sorties into the hottest airspace on Earth, they have sent female fighter pilots to blast these misogynist asshats into the dust they came from.
(CNN) The first female fighter pilot in the United Arab Emirates, she led a strike mission this week against the terror group, that country's ambassador to the United States said Thursday.
"She is (a) fully qualified, highly trained, combat ready pilot, and she led the mission," Yousef Al Otaiba told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
...
Al Otaiba said the campaign against ISIS basically boils down to the question of what type of society one wants.
"It's important for us -- moderate Arabs, moderate Muslims -- to step up and say this is a threat against us. This is more of a threat against us than it is against you. This is not just a threat to our countries. This is a threat to our way of life," the ambassador told MSNBC.
CNN spoke to Al Mansouri earlier this year about her work. She had wanted to be a fighter pilot since she finished high school, but had to wait until women were allowed.
"At that time, the doors were not open for females to be pilots. So I had to wait almost 10 years for the decision to be taken," Al Mansouri said.
She stressed there's no difference between men and women when it comes to defending their country.
Woman are the silent majority with the most at stake in the unleashed Islamic Statist movement. They are not going to go down without a fight. Good on them.