Battle-hardened women fighting alongside Kurdistan’s rugged Peshmerga are striking fear into the hearts of Islamic State fighters, many of whom reportedly believe getting killed by a female will bar them from heaven.
The women, fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the PKK, told Stars and Stripes they have an intense interest in killing the bloodthirsty marauders who have beheaded Christians, raped women and sold females into slavery across a treacherous swath of Iraq and Syria.
“Everywhere they go they kill and do bad things in the name of Islam,” said Zekia Karhan, 26, a female guerrilla from Turkey. “They captured a lot of women and they are selling them in Syria for $100. They rape women and behead them in the name of Islam.”
Karhan is a member of PKK, the leftist Kurdish group classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and NATO. She and others ave flocked to the front lines in the all-out effort to retake Iraqi cities and towns from Islamic State.
Another female PKK fighter from Turkey, Felice Budak, 24, told Stars and Stripes she smells fear on the enemy. Islamic State fighters “are very scared of death because they are only here to kill people,” she said. “I don’t mind doing it over and over again. I’ve already fought in Turkey, Iran and Syria.”
The extremists are terrified of being killed by the opposite sex, Karhan said. In northern Iraq, it is said that the Islamic State fighters believe that they won’t be admitted to heaven if they are killed by a woman.
staff