Adam Chandler
The Wire
BusinessInsider.com
8/18/2014
…Last week, we mentioned the growing role of the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, in the fighting. Despite being designated a terrorist group by the United States for waging a decades-long battle against Turkey, the group has become a formidable opponent in the battle against ISIS. Helping to lead the way have been female guerrillas who enlisted in the battle to fighting alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga. As Joe Parkinson reported:
Syrian commanders say the security and quality of life is improving as their guerrilla forces expand rapidly, propelled by thousands of young volunteers. Recruitment is boosted by the deployment of women soldiers on the front line, often in all-female units.
Read the complete article at BusinessInsider.com
H/T The Anchoress where there is much more. In part:
…Iraq is facing it’s last chance to be free (and that link is a must-read). This report out of McClatchy says Americans are being missed:
They see the U.S. wading in to protect a favored ally in Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government, but leaving the rest of Iraq to fend for itself since militants in the Islamic State displaced hundreds of thousands of Shiite Arabs when they seized the city of Mosul in June.
“From the beginning, the Iraqi government has asked America to step in to a dangerous situation for the Shiites,” said Farid al Ibrahimi, a Shiite lawmaker. “When (the Islamic State) tried to attack the Kurdistan region, the movement by the Americans was so, so, so fast.”
And, too, the Christians! People still don’t seem to want to talk about the Christians who have been purged and exiled from Iraq…
Related: Lawmaker slams Obama for his narrow response in Iraq (video)
“ISIS hate fighting female PKK because if a woman kills you, no heaven.”
Please, let American jets bomb my prison… death is better than to be forced off with a strange man: 8 months pregnant, captured by Islamic thugs waging ‘Sexual Holy War’ – one woman issues a heartrending plea
…Their stories are shocking and strikingly similar, whether from the hostage themselves, husbands talking to captured wives, fathers whose daughters and sons are behind bars, even escaped children who witnessed parents marched off by IS forces under black flags.
In an exclusive interview offering disturbing insight into their cruel zealotry and callous practices, IS prison official Abu Obaida detailed the stark options confronting seized women and girls…
Read the whole thing.
