Their support of youth participation in the YBŞ—especially for women and girls—is made all the more striking by the fact Yazidis in rural Sinjar are often part of traditional patriarchal families. So-called honor killings of Yazidi women believed to have shamed their families have even survived into the present. A gruesome video that drew headlines and condemnation in 2007 showed a 17-year-old Yazidi girl named Dua Khalil Aswad being stoned to death by her own people on suspicion she converted to Islam to elope with a Muslim.
But the PKK/YPG model preaches equality of the sexes, something gaining ground among the Yazidis rescued by the militias.
Vian, the teenage PKK commander and drill instructor, claims for her part that the threat to ISIS fighters they’ll be killed by women gives coed units a psychological edge. “We have heard ISIS is afraid of fighting women,” she says. “We think ISIS is saying ‘if not for women, we’d control all the world.’”
“They don’t want to be killed by us,” she adds smugly.
It’s appalling that they have to rely on groups like the PKK for help.
the PKK/YPG model preaches equality of the sexes
PKK are also recalcitrant Stalinists. Or were at least.
Not that fundamentalist Islam is any better.
I thought the PKK had gone legit?