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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Kurd female group launches attack on ISIS near Sinjar |
| 2016-11-13 |
| [ARA News] Erbil – The Shingal Women’s Units (YJS), a Kurdish all-female force in northern Iraq, said on Saturday they will launch an operation to ‘avenge Yezidi women’ and to save women that ISIS hold hostage. “We have not forgotten Êzidî [Yezidi] women sold in markets of Mosul or burnt alive. We know that the people that ISIS holds as hostage are waiting for us to rescue them. We will not stop until we liberate our women and take revenge,” said the YJS –affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). According to local sources, the Shingal Resistance Units (YBS) –including the YJS– will soon start an operation to liberate the villages around Shingal district [also known as Sinjar] from Islamic State’s (ISIS) militants. When ISIS jihadists attacked the Iraqi Yezidi communities in August 2014, they raped and forcibly married thousands of young women they captured in an orgy of violence. They also converted their female captures to their own brand of Sunni Islam and sold them in slave markets across their would-be Caliphate. ISIS is still holding a significant number of sex slaves, according to Belkis Wille, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. The YBS is part of a coalition led by the Shia Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), which launched an anti-ISIS operation Tel Afar of northern Iraq in late October. According to the PMU, the Tel Afar operation constitutes a part of the battle for Mosul. The town of Tel Afar lies 50 kilometer from Sinjar, and the PMU group says they want to cut the road between Raqqa and Mosul and encircle Mosul in order to prevent ISIS from escaping the province. It is possible that the YBS could also get involved in Tel Afar since ISIS holds many Yezidis captive in the Turkmen town. The new Sinjar operation could lead to more tensions between Baghdad and Turkey. Turkey opposes a presence of the PKK in Sinjar, and is against the Shia-led PMU units to march towards Shia-Sunni mixed Turkmen town of Tel Afar. Both Turkey and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) fear the Shia militia might cooperate with the PKK to create a Shiite corridor towards Syria. But the PKK and the Shia PMU say the operations are to defeat ISIS and to help Yezidis, not to create corridors. According to Gareth Stansfield, a British academic and expert on Kurds, Tel Afar represents a problem to the KDP. “While the Kurdish leaders are no friends of the Sunni insurgents, they are perhaps even more fearful of the presence of Shi’a militias so close to the Kurdistan Region’s borders,” Stansfield wrote for the Woodrow Wilson Center. “Another problem for the KDP in particular is that the possible entry of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) into the conflict would constitute a clear and present danger that would have to be removed,” he said. Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said last Thursday that Turkey will not allow a PKK presence in Sinjar and also warned about the risk of involving elements ‘foreign to Mosul and Tel Afar’ in a reference to the PMU units. Last month, Turkey sent additional troops towards Silopi district on the border with Iraq. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #3 Pretend it's your ex, he's drunk again and just got paid. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2016-11-13 16:26 |
| #2 "pretend it's your ex" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2016-11-13 14:40 |
| #1 Women living in close proximity with each other for a sufficient time tend to synchronize their cycles. For a few days each month the YJS could be the most vicious fighting unit ever seen. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2016-11-13 13:54 |