Tuesday, November 4, 2014 ISIS jihadis have threatened to forcibly marry any female fighters they manage to capture in a message delivered to the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Colonel Nahida Ahmad Rashid, commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion Peshmerga Female, said that the jihadis even plan to wed women they are ‘disgusted’ by. ‘The message said that whenever they catch any Peshmerga woman, they will marry them,’ she explains. But Colonel Rashid says she and her troops have other ideas and revealed that she has asked fighters to keep a spare bullet to hand in case of capture. ‘I have told all my frontline soldiers to keep one bullet in their pocket in case they are captured,’ she reveals. ‘I never want any of them to be captured by ISIS.’ So far, Colonel Rashid and her fighters have not needed to use their spare bullets, although she says that other PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] soldiers fighting in the Syrian town of Kobane have been forced to do so. ‘Last week, one of the PKK fighters found herself alone and surrounded by ISIS after all her friends had been killed. She shot herself rather than let them take her.’ The Kurdish Peshmerga is famous for its use of female soldiers, all of whom battle alongside their male counterparts on the frontline. As a result, they are on the sharp end of the fight against ISIS who, according to Colonel Rashid, are particularly terrified of women fighters because they believe that men dispatched by women won’t go to Paradise. ‘ISIS are real hypocrites,’ she sniffs, disdainfully. ‘They think if they are killed by women Peshmergas, they aren’t going to go to heaven. ‘ ‘They want to make us submissive but they are afraid of us so they are real hypocrites.’ But if ISIS hope that their threats of forced marriage will make Colonel Rashid and her fighters rethink their participation in battle, she has a stern message for them – we will find you and when we do, we will kill you. ‘It is a huge tragedy for me to see humans, in the 21st Century, torturing and beheading people like ISIS do,’ she adds. ‘Until the day I die, until the last drop of my blood, I will fight ISIS. ‘I find them indescribably disgusting. How would you feel if it was women living near you who were being married off by force by ISIS? How would you feel? They are doing the most disgusting things I have ever seen in my life.’ She also hit out at men who think women make less impressive fighters. ‘On the frontline, the only difference between a male peshmerga and us is in the machine guns we use. ‘The heaviest weapon we use is the 14.7mm. The men use heavier guns. Other than that, there are no differences between us. ‘When the enemy comes, you have a gun in your hand and you have to fight. If you run back, they will kill you. If you don’t fight, they will kill you. You have to fight to survive.’ What’s more, she says, she has no shortage of volunteers willing to join her force – including her own 10-year-old daughter. ‘She is just 10 but she wants to become a Peshmerga,’ she chuckles. ‘She says she wants to take revenge on ISIS for all the things they have done to children.’ One who feels the same is a 22-year-old fighter named Sevres. A newcomer to frontline life, she says she is hugely proud of her country and will fight to defend it whatever the cost. She too has little time for ISIS and describes their thoughts on female fighters as ‘freakish’, saying that along with her husband, she plans to kick them out of Iraq. ‘I feel very sad about the things they [ISIS] do and the threats they have made against us women if they capture or kidnap us. But my priority now is to defend my country, not listen to what they say.’ Ominously, she adds: ‘I am so happy that I am going to defend my country. I am going to clean the place of dirty ISIS.’ Press journalist for HRO media – Khizer Hayat reports.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 23:00:39 +0000
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