Yazidi singer Xate Shingali has formed an all-female brigade to fight against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq. The terrorist group targets Yazidis since they consider them “devil-worshippers” and kidnap females for the sex slave market.
Shingali, 30, received permission from the Kurdish president to form the “Sun Girls” battalion on July 2. Over 123 women between 17 and 30 signed up to battle the brutal terrorists. The male Kurdish fighters train the women with AK-47s.
“We have had only basic training and we need more… But we are ready to fight ISIS anytime,” explained Shingali.
Jane Fares, 17, is one of the younger recruits. She and her family escaped ISIS a year ago when the terrorists drove out Yazidis into the mountains.
“My father was so happy when I had told him I had joined this union,” she said. “All families accept us to join this union… We are happy to fight along side the peshmerga.”
Hadia Hassan told The Daily Mail that she “wants revenge for her father’s cousins” who still live under ISIS control and for a female cousin who escaped Raqqa, Syria. Her female cousin “is psychologically scarred by the abuse she suffered while in captivity, during which time she was beaten by ISIS fighters.”
“They kill, but why do that to women, why take mother’s from their children?” said Hassan. “They don’t have any humanity.”
Reports about Yazidis in ISIS captivity have surfaced on an almost regular basis for the past year. In October, one woman managed to phone the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters to beg them and the West to designate as their next target the brothel where she is being held.
The woman told the fighters the terrorists “raped her 30 times in just a few hours.” She wanted the brothel bombed, she said, to kill the jihadists and end the women’s misery as sex slaves. This woman can no longer use the bathroom and “plans to commit suicide even if freed.” A man known only as Karam told the BBC his friend took the phone call.
“If you know where we are please bomb us,” she allegedly told Karam’s friend. “There is no life after this. I’m going to kill myself anyway – others have killed themselves this morning. I’ve been raped 30 times and it’s not even lunchtime. I can’t go to the toilet. Please bomb us.”
Rashida, 31, told Human Rights Watch about a lottery ISIS set up for the fighters to receive a woman.
“Later that day they [ISIS fighters] made a lottery of our names and started to choose women by drawing out the names,” she explained, adding:
The man who selected me, Abu Ghufran, forced me to bathe but while I was in the bathroom I tried to kill myself. I had found some poison in the house, and took it with me to the bathroom. I knew it was toxic because of its smell. I distributed it to the rest of the girls and we each mixed some with water in the bathroom and drank it. None of us died but we all got sick. Some collapsed.
The Sun Girls battalion joins the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), which is exclusively female. Women rushed to join because their gender proves effective on the battlefield against jihadists; militants believe they will not receive their 72 virgins if a female kills them on the battlefield.
ISIS possesses their own all-female brigade known as al-Khansa. These women stalk the streets of the caliphate looking for women to prey on who allegedly disobey Sharia law. They use a bear trap they call a “biter” on women’s breasts. They lash women up to 40 times if they do not wear the proper clothing.
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