The Women Warriors

I'd digg in a couple home to have before bed, and while I walked around the hotel grounds, I got a feel for Cabani at night. It was a pleasant evening, and a need to pee woke me up unusually early the next morning. Once I got back from the restroom, I made the profound error of unlocking my phone and checking the news. Sweet Lady Internet informed me that Turkish President Edwin had made a whole new spade of threats

against Java in the Syrian Democratic four Is. The United States was still ostensibly trying to mediate in the dispute between their largely Kurdish allies and the Turkish government, but everyone in the region knew the United States planned to leave, which made their actual negotiating position with Turkey practically nil. The cities we've been traveling through bright, defiant, Kovanni, peaceful, Derik, chaotic, kamishlo.

Ridawin called them all a terror corridor. In meetings with his own party, he promised to shatter this corridor no matter how the negotiations with the US to establish a safe zone along the Syrian borders concludes. His reasons for this go back decades, and they're tied up heavily in the deeply complicated history of Turkish domination over the Anatolian Peninsula. But the most recent justification for violence was, in fairness,

pretty straightforward. P KK militants in Iraq had absolutely assassinated a Turkish diplomat just the day before Jake and I had landed in her bill erda Win's contention was that all of Rojava was nothing but one big, giant safe space for a terrorist group to operate. In the debate over the peakk's role in Rojava is yet another super fucking complicated issue. The people who actually live here talk readily about who is from the mountains in the p k K and who is not. We'd actually talked about

this a bit the day before with Kobad. She'd acknowledged that these old fighters were often more experienced organizers than local Syrian Kurds, more professional or more experience the local or sometimes you find this mamas there are also super professional. So one of then demandin she organized all that moment, that mama that you met, and now she moved, and now that our organizatives them. So it's good that beginning.

It would be rank idiocy to deny the influence the PEKK wields in Rojava, but it would be just as foolish to act as if everything that happens here is part of some gigantic terrorist conspiracy to destroy Turkish sovereignty. The mamas are not militants, have all Salaman Ahim, who we met at the farm, did not have secret designs to assault Turkish military basis. Jin War was not a cover for any sort of militant action. There are very few simple truths in this place, but as best as

I can ascertain, two things are true. Number One, the Kurdistan Workers Party or p KK has been responsible for horrificed acts of violence in the past and is still responsible for violence in the present day. And Number two, the p KK also saved tens of thousands of Yazdi lives during the early days of the war against ISIS. The early YEPG was heavily dominated by p KK fighters, and the men and women who invaded Iraq to stop ISIS from massacring the z Ds were basically all p KK.

If you don't know this history, it's easy to look at the p kk's assassination of a Turkish diplomat and write them off is just another extremist group, But you really can't. Averting a genocide may not wipe the slate clean, but it damn share earns something in my book. And it's also worth noting that outraged as Turkey was over the attack her bill, the Turkish government gives zero fox about violating another nation's sovereignty to murder a political enemy.

Sacchina Johnsys was one of the founding members of the p k K, right alongside Abdulaglon. She wasn't faster lucky enough to escape to Syria when the government cracked down on them, and in September of nineteen eighties, she wound up imprisoned in the Arbuqure. Some thirty four of her fellow inmates were tortured to death during the years she was locked up. Seeing her friends get tortured to death was a profoundly radicalizing experience for Sechina and for many

of her comrades. This helped push the PKK to acts of more extreme violence in the nineteen eighties. While she was locked up, Johnson's led a series of inmate protests inside the prison. Her composure and toughness made her a natural rallying point for the imprisoned insurgents, and by the time she was released, Sechina Johnson's was seen as a legend within the p KK. She escaped to Syria after being freed, received armed training, and became one of the

movement's first female fighters. So Quena's first combat experience was against Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Army, who were then in the process of committing genocide via chemical weapons. She was good at fighting, and she pushed hard for more women to join the p KK as fighters. Since Johnson's was close to Abdulagelon, she was able to play a major role in getting the guerilla leader to embrace the concept of armed all women units. By nineteen nine three, one third

of the p KKs fighters were female. It's probably fair to say that Secchina Johnsons was as much a founder of the Rojavan Revolution as Abdulla Ajolan. Her decades of advocacy and personal lobbying certainly had a profound impact on APO and his eventual conversion into an obsessive advocate for gender equality. In nineteen under interrogation after his arrest, Apo said this, I started the women's movement to free women from the feudalism of men and to create a strong

type of women. I wanted lively discussions in relation to that. I do remember the name of Sacchina john Says. For her part, Secchina wound up dispatched to Europe to work on the political side of the p k k's operations,

lobbying the European Union for Curtish sovereignty. She spent nearly twenty years in France and was a prominent face for the movement until January ninth, two thousand thirteen, when she and two other Kurdish activists were gunned down by a Turkish maintenance worker with strong ties to Turkey's equivalent of the c i A. All of this was on my mind in the morning of July twenty five, as I tore myself away from my smartphone, showered, and stumbled out

into the breaking dawn with a goal of finding a cup of coffee. Instead, I found Kabat sitting out in front of the hotel and smoking a cigarette with an old man who identified himself as Papa Curdie. He invited me to sit, smoke and talk, and so we did. We talked a bit about the fighting against ISIS and the coming war against Turkey until Jake and Alan got up to join us. Then we all piled into the car and headed off. We rolled through downtown Kobani in our way out of town, and it gave me my

first real look at the center of the city. Everything is very clean, very new. We approach a traffic circle in the exact middle of the city and my eyes are drawn to what is easily the largeest television screen I saw in Rojava. It's mounted to a monument in the circle, and it displays a twenty four seven feet of drone footage of the city right after the Battle of Kobani ended. The footage shows us the same traffic circle as it was just a few years earlier, lasted

and ruined. Our first stop today is a press office for the SDF located just outside of Kobani. We need to secure permission to visit a nearby base for the YEPJ Rojava is all female militia. This particular base as the first all Arab training center for the wye PJ, which up until the last year or so had been overwhelmingly Kurdish dominated. No journalists had ever been allowed inside

this training center before. As a lawn barrels down the highway this morning, We've already been turned down more than once, but Kabat is absolutely committed to turning this no into a yes. So we park outside, walk in, and start what became a three hour back and forth between Kabat and a rotating series of SDF officials people on the academy.

So we're going to discussed with them or we're gonna see how if they said no media have been in the academy never, So this is the new we're at So well, Jake and I sipped coffee and smoked a lawns hard cigarettes about worked. It was a long, grinding and interminable process, but these kind of days are also an unavoidable reality of conflict journalism. As with soldiers, much of a journalist time in these places has spent hurrying

up for the opportunity to wait. By the third hour, Jake and I start to suspect that this whole thing might not actually work out. Kobat received no afterno from different officials the whole morning. She darted from person to person, one hand always on her phone as she gently applied each of her contacts within the SDF. It was a painfully slow process, but she did eventually get our yes.

We piled immediately into a LANs van, terrified that someone might change their mind if we were to linger too long. Once we actually got on the road, we shared a moment of gleeful celebration, made all the sweeter by the agony of the weight. Alon produced a pair of cigarettes for Jake and I spas bash. He grunted at us with a wiggly smile. Then he turned his eyes back to the road and put pedal to the metal. We'd already burned through a lot of the day getting the yes.

Now it was time to make it count. The White p J Bass is a massive compound in the desert, surrounded by low, cream colored walls and the yellow rolling plains of northeast Syria. There is fire in the air and dust all around us as we drive up to the entrance, which is lined with dozens of flags and icons from all the different units in the SDF. Behind these flags are rows of baby trees, saplings clearly planted

recently when the space was constructed. It's anyone's guess where Rojava will be by the time they grow to adulthood. We passed through a gatehouse, and then a lawn grumbles his van to a slow stop in the middle of a complex of large, low buildings that looked like the scilities for a rather humble state university. We see a few young women sitting out around the steps of a nearby building, huddled around a couple of books and studying.

If they weren't all wearing military fatigues, this might look like some progressive women's college in the desert. That impression fades when we meet our host, Neuras Rocca, the commander of this training facility. Like most of the women will meet today, she has adopted a nom de geer. The standard is to take the name of the city of your birth. In her case, Rocca. She looks to be in her mid twenties, although her face seems much older.

She keeps her jaw clinched tight, and my lasting impression of her face is all stern lines and sharp angles have all. Rocca presents a powerful air of severity to the world. This is reinforced by the patch on her shoulder, which bears a picture of Abdula Agelan in the words no life without our leader. For all that though, she is quiet and polite as she welcomes us into this training facility, which is also her home. We carry our gear into a large meeting room in the compound's main building.

The meeting room is rectangular, about the size of a large trailer. The walls are all lined with ground level couches, essentially just a network of thick cushions that provide comfy, low slung seating around the walls of the facility. There is no APO picture on the wall, but there is a flat screen TV which is playing coverage from one of Rojava's local TV news networks. The day's big stories about the peace talks between Turkey, the US and Rojava's

self administration. We settle in, exchange some pleasantries, and then Hubat and I slipped rather casually into an interview with haval Roca. She refers to this training facility as an academy, and through Hubbat tells us why it was opened in the first place. While they opened this academy because there was a necessity for the Arab sect in order don't understand the corn land which they opened it. This academy

in Arabic. The whole training courses two months and a full month of it is ideological training, starting with a class in the history of Syria and then an introduction to the accuracy with women's rights as the core of that philosophy. Core education, which is the feminist movements and specifically the characters who are filmous like and the other women who are the statute they make a stand in

the revolution history struggling women. This education into the history of feminist movements eventually dovetails into a history of the YPJ. The goal is for women here to feel as if they are part of a struggle that's bigger than Syria and older than just the ideals of Rojava. So they are giving share, including this whole movement in around the world globally. What who are those women, why they are fighting, who they were fighting, why this revolution take a place?

So all this they are explaining during this feminist movement. A Roca explains that her goal is not just to train these women to fight, but to train them to be leaders in their community. They are preparing those people who are leading in as as a leaders, as as you know, commanders, to lead the community, the society to be knowing their surface. This is what they are trying to building here. And uh yeah, they are seeing people

from different parts of Syrium. Even last time, there was a last before they graduated the last group, there was a Turkmen in this group, and untually anyone speaking promotes stupid's history. The Rojavan movement has been heavily Kurdish dominated. Critics of Rojava regularly make the case that it is really a Kurdish supremacist movement, but Arabs, Armenians, Turkmen, and members of other ethnic groups make up an increasingly large

percentage of the soldiers in the SDF. So they are teaching them about the democratic nation because for them, the core of democratic nation philosophy is the woman free woment, so without the filment that no one will could be

able to implement. Up to this point, what she's saying is what we've heard before, but it quickly becomes clear that she's actually trying to make a more nuanced point this project and who are going to implement this projected those people who are teaching them about the democratic nation, because that was probably unclear to a lot of people.

What have all Rockett was saying through Hubbad is that in addition to fighting, the women who train here are expected to go back to their communities and helps spread democratic values among them. This is the long game for Rojava, and it's the only real long game that the Kurdish

founders of this movement could hope to have. The STF has made education and history, politics and ethics as much of a priority as armed training because they consider spreading this education to be something that contributes to their immediate physical security. It's a democratic nation. On all the other wars here it's a sectarian war, so they're one of democratic nation, which is diversity and include all the nationalists.

We in the United States are currently receiving a crash course on what happens when a society loses any kind of shared conception of history and ethics. At its very worst, the sort of collapse and shared understanding can lead to civil wars and ethnic cleansing. Kurds in this part of Syria are no stranger to ethnic cleansing. They have been victims and also perpetrators. Kurdish fighters were active participants in

the Armenian genocide of nineteen fifteen to nineteen seventeen. The Armenian genocide is too complex a topic to cover in detail now, but it's worth noting that Key denies it ever happened. Overwhelming evidence proved that somewhere between one and two million people were killed on the orders of the Ottoman Turkish government. Many nations around the world have officially recognized the Armenian genocide. The United States is not one of them. Before he took office, Barack Obama promised to

change this fact. He did not keep that promise. Top Obama advisers Ben Rhodes and Samantha Power have recently acknowledged that they view this as a mistake. Rhodes explained to Politico every year there was a reason not to. Turkey was vital to some issue that we were dealing with, or there was some dialogue between Turkey and the Armenian government about the past. The main reason Turkey was too vital to offend is the massive air base the United

States maintains in the Turkish city of Inserlik. The fact that this air base includes fifty nuclear warheads complicates matters further, but the issue of the Armenian genocide is not complicated in Rojava. Abdulla Augelon began writing about the need for Kurds to atone for their role in the Armenian genocide in the late nineteen eighties. In two thousand nineteen, on the International Day of Armenian Genocide Commemoration, the SDF announced

the creation of its first all Armenian military brigade. The men and women of the YPG and YPJ learn about the Armenian genocide is part of their training, one way or the other. The goal of all this is to promote self defense. One of the basic listens that's we are giving it's uh self defense, self defense culture. We wanted to build in this character of those fighter that self defense it's a you're right, it's a legal right

for any human beings to have it. Unfortunately, in this region there have been a lot of different armored actors and they have been different behaves against the other, different humans. When we wanted to build them just self defense way that we don't want any as a literary forces, you know it to control them, to control their character that's

not occurring ground or whatever. So yeah, we want to because we want to implement the line the philosophy lines of Agel and that's it's about the freedom of the woman, and we wanted the self defense with the freedom and in the character presentive of the crew kind of the treat of the woman to be a It's not lost on me that one group's ideological education as another group's brainwashing.

The Turkish government's contention would certainly be that the girls and women of the space are all being brainwashed to serve a terrorist group no better than al Qaeda or ISIS. Fortunately this was an area in which I was able to do some more investigation. I could see that haval Rocca had a notebook full of instructional materials for the day's courses. I asked if we could see it. She handed the notebook over and let me take photos of

the training material. I did not have time to gather a comprehensive collection of every lesson, but I walked away with the class syllabus in the full text of a one course unit. The syllabus was for the first thirty days of the two month training, and it lined up with what haveval Roca had claimed during our interview. The first few days focused on rules for behavior and procedures in the YPJ and STF Basic Order and Military Discipline.

Day six starts with courses on criticism and self criticism, the tech mill system. We talked about earlier and ysical and moral values. Much of the course centers around reading the works of Adlaglan. His booklet The Democratic Nation is studied on day fourteen, Liberating Life, another booklet is on day sixteen, Women in the Family, and on day eighteen. All of these books are available in full for free on the website Aujalon Books dot com O C A L A N B O O K S dot com.

You can read them yourself if you want a deeper understanding of the course material. For our purposes in this podcast, I'm just going to read some selections I found interesting from Liberating Life, The History of the Loss of freedom is at the same time the history of how woman lost her position and vanished from history. It is the history of how the dominant male, with all his gods and servants, rulers and subordinates, his economy, science, and arts,

obtained power. Woman's downfallen loss is thus the downfallen loss of the whole of society, with the resultants sexist society. The sexist male is so keen on constructing his social dominance over women that he turns any contact with her into a show of dominance. The depth of a woman's enslavement and the intentional masking of this fact is thus closely linked to the rise within a society of hierarchical

and statist power. As women are habituated to slavery, hierarchies from the Greek word hierarchy, a ruled by the high priest, are established, the path to the enslavement of the other sections of society is paved. The enslavement of men comes after the enslavement of women, and another quote housewife iszation is the oldest form of slavery. The strong man and his entourage defeated the mother woman in all aspects of her cult through long and comprehensive struggles. Housewife iszation became

institutionalized when the sexist society became dominant. Originally, the term hierarchy referred to the government by the priests the authority of the wise elders. Initially it had a positive function. We may perhaps even view the beneficial hierarchy in a natural society as the prototype of democracy. The mother woman and the wise elders ensured communal security and the governance

of the society. They are necessary and useful fundamental elements in a society that was not based on accumulation and ownership. Society voluntarily awarded them respect. But when voluntary dependence is transformed into authority, usefulness, and a self interest, it always gives way to an uncalled for instrument of force. The instrument of force disguises itself behind common security and collective production. This constitutes the core of all exploitative and oppressive systems.

It is the most sinister creation ever invented, The creation that brought forth all forms of slavery, all forms of mythology and religion, all systematic annihilation and plunder, the emotional intelligence of woman that created wonders, that was humane and

committed to nature, and life was lost. In its place has been born the cursed analytical intelligence of a cruel culture that has surrendered itself to dogmatism and attached itself from nature, that considers war to be the most exalted virtue, and enjoys the shedding of human blood, that sees his arbitrary treatment of women and his enslavement of man as its right. I into remind everyone again that these words I just read are part of the mandatory training program

for a militia in the Syrian desert. I'll read one more quote before we move on. The male has become a state and turned this into the dominant culture. Class and sexual aggression developed together. Masculinity has generated ruling gender, ruling class, and ruling state. When man is analyzed in this context, it is clear that masculinity must be killed. Indeed, to kill the dominant man is the fundamental principle of socialism. This is what killing power means, to kill the one

sided domination, the inequality and intolerance. Moreover, it is to kill fascism, dictatorship, and despotism. After concluding our interview with Havalaka and taking photos of the course materials, we break for coffee into smoke. While we're resting, a young woman wearing fatigues, a bright flower Kafia and Hello Kitty Socks gently steps into the room. She looks to be in her mid twenties, with straight black hair, a handsome angular face,

and large, intelligent brown eyes. She introduces herself as a friend, Missie. She tells us that she is the Wye pj's media representative at this base. Shortly after arriving, we told have All Rocca that we wanted to interview some of the soldiers here about their lives. Have Alla Freene tells us that her job is to sit in during the interview

and make sure we're respectful of her soldiers. Many of these women are just seventeen or eighteen years old, and a number of them have traumatic histories that lead them here. She wants to make sure we don't press our subjects to talk about things they aren't comfortable sharing. This concerns me a bit. The request is not inherently unreasonable, but it's only proper journalistic skepticism to worry that a media representative sitting in on an interview might be there to

control or restrict the answers given. By a subject. I decided to keep an eye on Havla Freen during the interview. We step away and set up for our first interview in a small side room. All of the women we talk to today A volunteered to speak. The first is of All Kurdistan, a square jawed woman with coke bottle glasses who gives me very strong librarian pipes. Kurdistan Barran.

She's from original She came for ideological training. She is a member of the The MMS or Manbij Military Council is one of the many militias that works under the broad umbrella of the SDF. Have All Kurdistan joined back in two thousands sixteen, and during that bloody period of the war, there was not much time for ideological training. Now that things have calmed down, the SDF center here

to finish learning. She reached adulthood in one of the most traumatic and trying circumstances imaginable of all Kurdistan's adolescence coincided disastrously with the meteoric rise and expansion of the Islamic State. The soldiers of the Caliphate conquered her home and she was forced to live under their brutal rule for years of her life. Did she suffered during ISIS when it was controlling the Remember what happened? She was once in the market and she has to argue with

the one of the ISIS members fighters. So they took her to a jail and she stand the jail for fifteen days and they're supposed to kill her. So anyhow she survived. She managed to get out and be released, and she was waiting on this came. She joined that it was obvious that if all Kurdistan had more to say about her time in ISIS jail, But for the moment,

I moved forward with questions. I wanted to know how all of the radical political ideas of the large Alan had sat with a young woman just freed from ISIS captivity. And somehow this education it was sometimes making like a comparision for me about my ex life en slavery life, she said, and my new one. You know, I was like questioning all my ex life. Oh you're As we moved on, she told us about her first time shooting a rifle. She found it fun and wanted to keep

shooting after they ran out of bullets. She also told us about her first time in combat during the grinding battle to retake Raca from Isis. So somehow, you know, like our animate wasn't easy and it was eis So the first time when I went there, I have a feel I have. I was somehow afraid. I was like, you know, it's a new for me to to be there. But at the same time, I was like super concentrating and you know, take care to do all these things.

When she mentions the importance of paying attention, she's referring to the fact that every Isis battlefield was absolutely filthy with unexploded ordinance. This is something I experienced myself during the Siege of Mosel, stepping through neighborhoods that had been liberated by Isis minutes earlier. Not only were the streets filled with duds unexploded bombs from coalition aircraft and artillery from the Iraqi Army, but the whole fucking place was

booby trapped. To helen back, veteran soldiers would point out specific wires looped across doorways and the entrances to alleys. They take me around and show where those wires connected to piles of high explosives. They'd also point out numerous abandoned vehicle based i e. D s and suicide vests littering the ground like straight condoms on the San Francisco

sidewalk um. So before you said you wanted to enjoin Mark Jars revenge for what happened when you were living on the Isis and for all the women, then you went to the capital, to Rocca and chase them out. Do you feel like you know you've got that revenge? No? Not yet, I mean she said, like as I said, like I when I threw myself. If all the woman's are not free, I'm not the take it didn't take our evenge and we were going to if we didn't

completely defeated Isis from the roots. Were still are working on that. I didn't get our revenge it. Jake pressed a little further, asking how of all Kurdistan believed she could get revenge for the crimes Isis committed against her and the other innocent people of Northeast Syria struggling resistance. We have a determination, this is the only way to the conversation moves on and eventually we wind up on the subject of male supremacy and the nicab the full

head covering garment isis made mandatory for all women. How does she feel when she sees that we were in rock yesterday and then we're more women than I've seen anywhere else in Rosia? How does she feel when she sees that? Does she feel like sort of that those attitudes of male supremacy that are still very deeply ingrained are kind of the roots of ISIS. I feel so

pitiful for them, and I saw them. I feel like for that we have to resist that in order to say free all though so many this because this closet, this thing is represented ISIS. It's representing ISIS mentality, which is enslavered in the woman because of that, wanted to change one or two to you know. Next, I asked her how she thinks the men she has served with, particularly the older men, have adapted to serving alongside women.

Both have all Kurdistan and have all the friend. The hPG im mediately is on burst out laughing, had been away and he is a male. At that point, have all the friend speaks up. While I wait for Hobbat's translation, I wonder if you might try to walk back the claims of lingering bias among male soldiers in the STF. Those for those others struggle those for those, it's it's higher than the others, you know. Yea. So the idea, she said, like, yeah, we cannot change anything. Are not

the history of the oppressed of the woman. It's a long history, fast out and years ago. So this mentality have been, uh, you know, take a place in the community for the women men. Everyone likes still believing in that. So to change it that it's another they are not

it's gonna attack. Even what she's saying, training there, and she's referring to the month of required ideological training, have all A friend admitted freely that the trainers at this academy we're taking on an almost insurmountable task fighting against generations of entrenched misogyny. It's like, I need a lot of time to be changed. So even now we are with our colleagues, the men colleagues in a different she said,

colleagues there we are. There are our friends, they are were all commardes, they are and we're fighting together, we're taking training, we are have a living together. But that is the end. We have our struggle. We have our struggle as a woman, because if we did, we're not

going to be free. Ourselves and explained to them how it's important to understand that for them also, we cannot get our results from our struggle as much as we have a man in this mentality, we have to keep struggling because in order to get this level of equality, gender equality between us, and they understand how how we have to share everything together. It's need time and we are like doing that, right, I said, like as she he's asking specifically about this elderly men or the demand

who are a little bit other than the others. It's more difficulties there for sure, because they are they have this three archy mentality, Uh, you know, more in their character than the others, so we can't change it faster so they those for those men, it's higher us struggle. It's certainly fair to say that of all the Frame was not shy of admitting the shortcomings and imperfections within the SDF. I grew less worried that she was sitting in on the interview in order to somehow restrict the

information I received. Her true purpose for being in the room became clearer when Jake asked his next question two things and as well say it's too drama action, don't feel the post to answer, but I want to know why, what the argument was in the market with the Isis guy and what it was like. Kabat translates the question and we see the reaction of All Kurdistan's face before she begins her response. She maintains her composure, but the story that follows is clearly not easy for her to tell.

Of Ala Frine puts a hand on her comrades knee and looks her in the eyes. She seems it wants to be telling of all Kurdistan. You can do this, and you don't have to do it if it's too hard. So the problems are the argue. It started because she was fully warning this n villa and everything. But there is a built, Kabat said, belt there the man who stopped of All Kurdistan was a member of the his

ba isis Is religious police. She'd been out shopping with her siblings but was forced to send them home and head to jail. Of All Kurdistan continued to tell her story, and of course neither Jake or I could understand what she was saying, but we saw very clearly the shock on Hobart's face as the story went on. That is no, so yeah, they took her to the center. They still all her gold, money, all the properts that to us

with her, everything towards with him. And also they put her family his name on unless that's you know, always they were gonna double checking on them or whatever. And they first wanted to kill her, you know, excusing her. Then they changed it to one thousand five lashes. Yes, lashes as the whipping someone in the back with a long leather bull whip. I'm sure you're wondering right now, how many lashes does it take to kill a person?

Can a human being survived fifteen hundred of them? And the answer is that not all lashes are created equal. In eighteen forty six, a young British soldier died in London after receiving just a hundred and fifty lashes, and two thousand and four, a fourteen year old Iranian boy was given eighty five lashes and died, but that was due to the whipper accidentally hitting him in the head.

And two thousand eight, Saudi Arabia sentenced a doctor to fifteen hundred lashes for prescribing a princess medication that led her to a drug addiction. The doctor survived, but he also received only fifty lashes per week until his sentence was fulfilled. There are cases of human being surviving more than fifteen hundred lashes in a single terrible beating, and so haveval Kurdistan's punishment was not necessarily a death sentence.

Receiving that many lashes will, however, completely shred the outer layer of skin on your back down to the bone. I have read accounts of modern people who received fifty two a hundred lashes. They described the pain as incomprehensible. This lashes. It was by three persons because if one of them get tired, he will not get it strong, you know enough, So they try to hold that in your head. Three strong men wore themselves out beating this

woman's back into bloody ribbons. One thousand, five hundred lashes, three persons changes, each one of them five hundred to keep strong as much as I can, and they still didn't break her mask. And because the woman have a predetermination, she means that have all Kurdistan's desire to be free, to escape isis is what kept her alive through the beating.

For a few seconds, Jake and I just sat in silence processing the story we've heard to recover from that kind of injury to be able to like going to the world and like that's a serious injury, just make a in the whole. But she did recover, and once she did, she used the same determination that had seen her through the beating to affect her escape from ISIS controlled territory. Once she was free, she joined the SDF. If she had a weapon training and comrades with the

same no man would ever whip her again. We take a break after that and then sit down to interview another young fighter. As before, have All a Friend sits in on the interview. Our next subject is younger than have All Curdistan and gives her age is nineteen. She wears camo fatigues with curly hair that has slicked back

on top. She tells us she spent four or five years of her life under DASH control and gives her name as Because I am not great at reading Arabic, for the rest of this episode, I will refer to her as have All Revenge Revenge Friend. You have to admit it's a pretty badass nickname. I asked her what specific moments come to mind when she thinks about revenge

her brother joint having included with the ISIS. So she wanted to take revenge those ISIS members who are who are recruiting all the others in order to using them as a tool, I guess, or in a very dehumanizing way against the other population. But the how how they destroyed our country, So I wanted to take revenge of order. I asked her how her brother explained his decision to

join ISIS at the time. So, my brother, who has already liked this religious background a friend, he was always like uma in different mosques for the others look like So once he decipted for a party five days and he completely disappeim that when he returned back with you what that he's having included with the US because my cousin, he is a mere inn dash and he included my brother and the mirror is a leader within the Islamic state. About revenge lived under ISIS for almost five years, basically

the entirety of her adolescence. She only escaped because the STF eventually liberated her hometown. I asked her, what was the very first thing you did once you realized you were free? So the first thing Hobart said, veil there in case it was unclear because as I said, so blush as to that closet, which she is completely dehumanizing, I guess us and looking to us not as a human being. I asked her next if she can remember the very first time she saw a woman carrying a gun.

Her voice almost breaks as she answers to the dentist. And I saw a woman with a wakman and I was looking to make a conversion. How oss how she is there? And in short, she first saw a woman of the y PJ. After escaping Isis control. The sight of a free woman with a rifle was shocking, mind blowing. After so many years under Iceis control, she decided to join. I asked her how it felt the first time she

held a gun of her own. My dream it was to join the And it was like I always I feel like it's an illusion or imagine I never I'm gonna happen. So whenever I was just doing that, I hold it. When it was for me, like I hope for myself, it was like already I have there a courage and wild to holded this hope for my teacher, to hold myself. You know what felt like. I was ready for that. I was a dreaming about it. I have a sporting you, so I dreamed about this my

dream of my left year. Next, I asked what would she do if a man ever tried to make her put on a knee cob again? The woman and our regions, for sure, we're going to try to deface myself. We conclude our interview with of all Revenge have all A Freen gives her friend a cheerful poke on the cheek.

I find the gesture striking, and I tell her son, you talk about friend that her pride and her friends has written all over her face when they talk, and her pride Linda Chicken, She didn't Tobacco said, I don't want to. She as a WANs They struggled and then they get the achievements and they I cannot highline sprint and I'm proud of thing. Have Alla Frien had initially not been willing to give an interview herself, but I've

grown increasingly interested in her throughout these interviews. I started this process suspicious of her, but her relentless positivity and supportiveness towards her comrades had thoroughly won me over. I ask again if she might want to talk, and this time she says yes. My name is a free Maso. I joined the YPG myself. I'm from a Freen. My family's origins had a lot to do with me joining. My family loves their homeland. This had a big effect on me. When my brother was martyred by ISIS had

an even bigger effect on me. I was thinking about it for a year. Joining the military is not easy thing. For a year until throughout all I was thinking about it, Will I go? Could I do it? I dwelled on it a lot because as a civilian person, your life will pass into a new life. That is, you take on a new life through your own choice. This created a big contradiction in me. I go, I don't go, I go. What happens? I joined like everyone else have

Alla Freen is shoeless. Well inside her socks have bright English words written across them. Never give up. When I joined, of course, I was scared. At first. I told myself I wouldn't tell my family. No matter how much a family loved their homeland, they love their child even more. And so when I joined, I didn't tell my family. I said I was just going to school and that i'd be back soon. When I had arrived to the Haval's they passed the information to my family that I

had joined the y PJ. At that time, my father came to me. I'll never forget what he said. He told me, this is your spirit. Then you have chosen the way that's before you. Who am I to keep you from this? But know also that if you betray this movement and come back home, I will throw you out of the house. But she made it through her training and she joined the wye pj's media center, essentially acting as a reporter or a pr agent for the militia.

After receiving the basic YPJ training, I joined the media center. The first time I went to the front, I didn't go as a fighter. The first combat I ever saw was in Telera Fat. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's towards Shabbah. When you, as a woman, have just joined the military, you wish to fight and experience war. Though we as women are completely against war. When you see your society and your people under authoritarianism, you are forced to defend your own society. That time, I didnifire my

gun because my comrades didn't allow me. They said, you are part of the media team. They protected me from threats. I had my weapon as well as my camera, but recording was my goal in the fight. I can play a role as part of the media team. My goal was to communicate to the public the reality of the war. Have all, a friend did not consider the defeat of ices to be the end of the y PJ struggle. She comes from no surprise, the city of a Frien,

which is currently occupied by Turkish BacT Islamist malicious. There is a pain inside me. The occupation of a freen has increased my thirst for events. Every piece of news from these people have been kidnapped, to those historical landmarks have been destroyed. Every new story like this increases my pain. This pain also pushes me to take revenge. But the liberation of a friend and the victory in the war against Turkey was not nearly the end of her ambitions.

Like Koreum Schamid, the head of the Woman's Economic Development Center we interviewed back at the beginning of our journey, a free Massa is a true believer. Now the goal of every fighter in YPJ is to liberate her mind. Because yes, it's true we have joined the y PJ, and thus we liberate our bodies. But this is not enough. We also have to liberate ourselves from the capitalist system. Throughout history, the first city states were built on the

basis of exploiting the woman. If we go back to history, we see that it was the women who created everything in natural societies. Before the rise of city states, women were leaders. But after the system of city states was built up by men, they began a pressing women for the first time history. Throughout the last four thousand years, a system has been built up over the woman. It doesn't allow her to work, to go outside, to take up the gun, even in her own home, she is

not allowed to express her opinion. Even when you get married and should live a shared life, you cannot express your own opinion. You aren't free to say what you want. Our goal is to bring an end to this mentality. We don't say that women should take a higher position than men. Our goal is a quality between women and men, to make it possible that our society can live with a free mentality. Neither women nor men should be the oppressor.

There should be equality. I have many many more questions, and I wish I could have stayed there for hours asking them. But this is a military trading academy, and our interviews have come up against one of their daily training exercises, a long march in full gear with rifles. Jake, Kobot and I are invited along, and so we lace up our boots and head into the scorching heat of the rojab In afternoon, the training platoon has already marched off, so we hop into a Lawns van to catch up

with them. We're hopping out. We're about to be on control with the White PG training union. Notches about let's see here about young women, nearly all of whom are carrying kalashnikovs, wearing fatigues and heads wrapped against the desert heat,

some wearing hats, somewhearing Caffia's. It's an interesting mix of colors, from the the b DU camouflage which could come straight out of the US military, to the colorful, beautiful head scarves, some of them with floral prints and little silver dangly bits on the end, some women choosing to walk with their heads completely uncovered, others and ball caps. Most of them are clearly very new to holding a gun. Others, like of all Curtistan, carry their rifles with an easy

familiarity born from hard use. We march with them for a while, and eventually the column comes to arrest by the shade of a copse of small trees. As they rest, the different squad leaders, including have All Curtistan, move around and help their comrades with minor uniform issues, instructing them on how to readjust bits of gear or the best way to relax while carrying an a K forty seven. I'm struck by how profoundly different this feels from the stereotypical image of a boot camp. No one here is

yelling at anyone. Instead, instructors and students make frequent gentle physical contact, touching each other on the arms and shoulders. They giggle toss pieces of grass at one another during playful arguments. Yet all the same, they learned the proper way to march with their guns and move in gear through the hell of Assyrian summer. The White Pj's reputation on the battlefield speaks to the fact that the style

of training is effective. After a few minutes of rest, the unit packs up and moves out, continuing its marks through the desert, I stand and watch them pass. I look at of all Curdistan, marching with her back straight, despite the mass of scars that lurk beneath her uniform shirt. Like her, nearly all these young women spent years of their lives living under Isis, forced to wear long black

robes covering them from head to toe. Even in scorching hundred and ten degree days like these, they were helpless, the unarmed victims of a death worshiping colt built on hateful masculinity. As they march past me, I split my gaze between their trumping column in the Turkish border wall, which looms as ever on the horizon. For all I know, there are bullets for every one of these young women waiting just a few miles away on the other side

of that fortification. And yet the tears that threatened at the corners of my vision are not tears of sorrow, because there is one thing, and only one thing that I know for certain. These women will never be slaves again. Shout Chou chou partijiano or game sin do be moy. The Women's War is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the i heart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.