Kurdish female fighters face jihadists in Iraq's north

MAKHMUR: Tekoshin remains on a mountain in north Iraq with a rifle threw over her shoulder and a projectile tucked into her cinch, confronting jihadists in "a battle to free ladies". 

Ladies have been battling nearby men in the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to wrest Mount Makhmur in northern Iraq back from Islamic State (IS) jihadists, whose treatment of ladies makes the battle particularly individual for the many female contenders on the mountain. 

IS-headed aggressors have overwhelmed substantial ranges of Iraq, and the gathering additionally controls noteworthy domain in neighboring Syria, ordering its cruelly prohibitive and ruthless understanding of Islamic law in both nations. 

Tekoshin, 27, says she and other ladies are battling the gathering not just as a result of the danger it postures to Kurds but since it "is against ladies' liberation". 

They don't permit ladies in ranges under their control to go to the business sector and power them to wear headscarves, she says. "Our battle against (the IS) is to protect ladies from them and from that sort of considering." 

Ladies, men convey together 

Exactly 50 ladies are among the warriors on the mountain from the PKK, which dispatched an insurrection for run toward oneself in Turkey in 1984 and has been recorded as a terrorist bunch by nations including the United States, however started peace talks in 2012. 

At the doorway to the mountain town of Makhmur, "The Islamic State" was scribbled on an one-story cement house, however quickly painted over since the PKK took it back. 

Tekoshin says ladies battled side by side with the men in the fight to compel out the jihadists. 

"We typically sort out ourselves in gatherings of four ladies, and I charge one of the gatherings," she clarified, wearing customary Kurdish attire normally seen on men. 

"Yet regarding the matter of battling, we split and we and the men convey together on distinctive fronts. "Kurdish ladies have battled nearby men for a long time in the PKK, its Syrian branch the People's Protection Units (YPG), and to a lesser degree, the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga powers. 

Asked whether she was hitched, Tekoshin chuckles: "The greater part of us here aren't hitched. I joined the PKK when I was 14 years of age. " 

Tekoshin says the PKK does not preclude its contenders from wedding, yet that it is by and large grimaced upon. 

'More apprehensive about us' 

She likewise discovers diverting the thought that the jihadists may have been amazed by candidly encountering ladies contenders. 

"I think (IS) were more apprehensive about us than of the men," she says, including that she considers "they accept they'll go to heck in the event that they kick the bucket at a lady's hands". 

While Tekoshin says she battles best with her Kalashnikov ambush rifle, Saria, 18, modestly says she feels similarly good with both light and overwhelming automatic weapons and expert rifleman rifles. 

Saria experienced childhood in northern Syria, and her two siblings and her sister are at present battling against IS there, she says, including that both her guardians were in the PKK. 

"When I was a youngster, I didn't think I would be a warrior. Anyhow I acknowledged the amount my (Kurdish) country needs me... also I picked this street," she says. 

"It is imperative for us to discover our spot in war, side by side with the men," she says. 

On the mountainside, the PKK warriors carry on with a public life. Typically they alternate cooking, yet in wartime, male volunteers from adjacent Arbil city deal with nourishing the warriors. 

For Shimal, a 26-year-old warrior, the opposition to IS fight is to the extent that solidarity with ladies who have succumbed to the jihadists as it is about the Kurdish national reason. 

IS "transforms ladies into slaves," she says.