Rethinking the role of women in war through the gender prism: Kurdish female combatants against the Islamic state

Temps de lecture : 9 minutes

Rethinking the role of women in war through the gender prism: Kurdish female combatants against the Islamic state

21.08.2020

Written by Pauline Beyler

Translated by Julie Penverne

Women’s place in armed conflicts is often confined to care, logistics or private space, while men’ s are in combat. However, several historical examples show their essential role in carrying out military operations. In this sense, Kurdish female combatants have been key players in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq since 2014. This phenomenon is far from new in the history of Kurdish organizations, where women have been integrated into various military and political positions for decades. This article proposes to rethink the role of women in times of war, through the gender prism.

Contextualization: the Kurdish struggle against the Islamic State

In 2011, the civil war flared up in Syria as part of the population opposed the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Having come to power in 2000, the Syrian president set up an authoritarian regime, structured around the single Baath party, where the population has very little power. The Arab Spring of 2011 was perceived as an opportunity for Syrians to demonstrate peacefully against the government and in favor of democracy. In response, the regime harshly repressed the demonstrators, turning this peaceful movement into an armed conflict. The Islamic state (IS) then used this opportunity to enter Syrian territory to seize areas where the government struggled to maintain control. In this complex context with multiple actors and conflicts, the Syrian Kurds found themselves threatened by the arrival of jihadists.

Different groups, aided by the international coalition, then decided to get involved in the war against IS, with the aim of driving them out of the territory. This was notably the case with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), composed mainly of Kurds, the Syrian Kurds of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), composed solely of women. These militias, fighting in Syria and Iraq, played a crucial role and have often been regarded as “the spearhead of the struggle against the IS^[1]Février Renaud, « 10 cartes qui montrent que les Kurdes ont été le fer de lance de la lutte contre l’État islamique », 11 October 2019, Nouvel Obs, Available at: … Continue reading”. This conflict highlights the role of Kurdish women in the ranks of armed groups, fighting side by side with men, and to rethink, from the prism of gender, “the feminist ideal of non-violence^[2]Bugnon Fanny, « Regards sur la violence politique des femmes », in S’émanciper par les armes ? Sur la violence politique des femmes dir. Caroline Guibet Lafaye, Alexandra Frénod, Inalco … Continue reading ” This ideal gives men a symbolic monopoly on violence while women are regarded as pacifists, too “fragile” to take up arms, also insisting on the exceptional nature of their use of violence because war is a men’s world. In fact, the Kurdish female fighters are a perfect example of the application of the notion of “female political violence^[3]Ibid, p. 19. and definition of political violence: “violence in the service of an established political project and the overthrow of social order and political authority” (Bugnon & … Continue reading” which allows us to shake up prejudices around the gender stereotypes we have just exposed and considers women, like men, as actors of violence in armed conflicts.

Kurdish women take up arms: a long-standing commitment

In 2014, the fight of the Kurdish female fighters made the headlines in many newspapers. However, their commitment was far from exceptional given the Kurdish history. The image of the female warrior is often mobilized to describe them and goes back at least to the 1800s, as illustrated by the famous Kurdish female fighter Kara Fatima Khanum, a warlord known for having led a battalion of men during the war against the Crimea in 1852. At the time, she was already challenging the conception of women’s place in the army and paving the way for other activists^[4]Jaffar, Shwan. « Les Peshmergas face à Daesh : forces et faiblesses de combattants mythifiés », 2017, Maghreb – Machrek, vol. 233-234, no. 3, p. 87.. The important political commitment of women can be explained in part by the history of the Kurdish people who, from the 19th century onwards, saw the rise of an independence movement to emancipate themselves from the centralization of the Ottoman Empire, pushing women to commit themselves to the national cause, whether by arms or through other channels. They join various groups such as the YPJ, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or mixed militias. In order to follow military and field training, training camps were set up in the 1990s in different places such as Iraq, where part of the Kurdish population is located.

In 1993, the PKK was made up of 30% of female fighters^[5]Grojean Olivier, « Penser l’engagement et la violence des combattantes kurdes : des femmes en armes au sein d’ordres partisans singuliers », in Caroline Guibet Lafaye, Alexandra Frénod (dir.), … Continue reading. While this is small yet significant at the same time, it marked a very important step forward, not only for a Middle Eastern country known to be conservative, but also in the light of the times. Thus, in 1997, a women’s brigade of Peshmergas^[6]The term Peshmerga is used to designate the Kurdish combatants; it translates as follows: “he who goes to meet death”. was created at the Kurdish military faculty of the citadel of Choualan. These places and political organizations have become places of emancipation for women, particularly through the use of weapons, who seek to overturn the stereotypes associated with political violence and to acquire more freedom in both the private and public spheres. Slogans such as “Women, Freedom! “are often chanted in these women’s military organization^[7]Flandrin Antoine, « L’héroïsme des résistantes kurdes », 4 March 2016, Le Monde, Available at: … Continue reading.

The political project carried by the Kurds of Syria has often been put forward to explain the significant presence of women in armed groups fighting, for example, against the Islamic state. It is described as progressive and claims to be feminist and ecological, wanting to break away from the patriarchal and traditional system.^[8]Grojean Olivier, op. cit. p.177..

A mobilization for self-determination…

The arrival of IS in Syria marked a new turning point in the representation of Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish women in combat. The role of female fighters was little known in the media until then, especially in the West. However, 2014 witnessed an over-mediatization of their mobilization in the media and their role occupied an increasingly important place in the political discourse on the Syrian conflict. This can be explained in part by the battle of Kobane (Syria) which has become a symbol of the struggle of female fighters against IS, who, after months of confrontations, managed to free the city from jihadists. Thus, according to France Télévision, there are 40% female fighters in Syria and about 500 Kurdish women from Iraq took up arms to drive back the IS^[9]Cogné Gaël, « Les combattantes kurdes, porte-drapeaux de la lutte contre les jihadistes », 10 November 2014, Franceinfo, Available at: … Continue reading.

Their motivations are diverse, yet the main one remains the national cause. The political project of independence is one of the reasons why women are fighting to participate in the liberation of the Kurds and the creation of a state of their own. If they have always
been associated with this struggle, as the resistance fighters in the 1960s and 1970s testify, it was in 1983 that texts associated the liberation of women and the liberation of Kurdistan, placing women both as key actors in the Kurdish revolution and as equals of men^[10]Dubuy, Mélanie. « La contribution des femmes à la revendication du peuple kurde à l’autodétermination », 2015, Civitas Europa, vol. 34, no. 1, p.98..

Thus, these female fighters are ready to risk their lives in order to realize their political project. However, the struggle for self-determination in the war against IS does not mean a relegation to the background of the feminist struggle, quite the contrary.

… and for the emancipation of women

This war also represented a means for these female fighters to assert their strength and authority in order to improve the status of women in Kurdistan but also more generally in the Middle East. Their status as women also provided a precious advantage against the jihadists who feared being beaten by them and who sometimes preferred to flee rather than be killed by them. “For them, we are bitches. But we’ve taught them what we’re made of. Sometimes they run away from us, scared, without taking care of the dead and abandoning their wounded^[11]Khalil Taha, « Contre l’État islamique, des combattatnes kurdes kalachnikov en main », 28 October 2014, Courrier International, Available at: … Continue reading ^]“. Indeed, the radical belief of the extremists is that if they are killed by a woman, they go straight to hell and cannot be considered martyrs: “They are afraid of our voices. They are afraid that we will kill them. They want the woman to be the slave of the man always^[12]Souleiman Delil, « Pour libérer les femmes de l’État islamique, des combattantes kurdes à l’assaut de Raqa », 12 November 2016, Tv5monde, Available at: … Continue reading”.

This belief is considered insane by these soldiers: “When I made them my prisoners, these jihadists looked down on the ground all the way to our camp. I don’t know if it was because they felt humiliated for being a woman’s prisoners or if it was out of religious modesty. Either way, it’s ridiculous. How ridiculous these men are!^[13]https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2014/10/23/des-combattantes-kurdes-kalachnikov-en-main”.

The tragedy of the Yezidi women was also a great trauma for all Kurdish women. In 2014, as jihadists seized the city of Sinjar, northwestern Iraq, thousands of women from the Yezidi minorities were abducted and forced into sexual slavery. Considered as objects, dehumanized, they were victims of sexual violence and became, in times of conflict, a weapon of war for the jihadists to weaken their enemies. Thus, their bodies were made into a ‘battlefield'^[14]Yaghobzaden Alfred, « Le corps des femmes yézidies comme champ de bataille », Image Visa, url: … Continue reading.

From then on, many Kurdish women took up arms with the aim of avenging these atrocities and freeing these women. Former victims also committed themselves so that no one would suffer what they had experienced. This drama has become one of the strong symbols of their feminist struggle against IS and patriarchal societies, which reduce women to their femininity and domesticity. The use of political violence is therefore mobilized as a means of emancipation for these female combatants, who see it as a key to show their strength and their ability to handle weapons.

Although taking up arms has become one of the means used in the struggle for the Kurdish and feminist national cause, many women are also engaged and mobilized through different channels such as social networks, politics or journalism. They fight at the risk of their lives as IS combatants perceive them as a threat. Many of them, like Havrin Khalaf, engineer at the head of the Future of Syria party, have been assassinated by these Islamist mercenaries. As such, they have become symbols of the struggle against IS.

A feminist struggle: still a long way to go

Female fighters, through political and military organizations, have thus contributed to shining a light on their feminist struggle, helped by the Kurdish leaders mobilizing to strengthen women’s rights. However, patriarchal traditions remain very present, especially in the villages where Kurds live, where religion has a more important place. Indeed, girls and women still remain under the powerful control of men and are still victims of arranged and forced marriages, despite some progress^[15]Minces Juliette, « A la rencontre des combattantes au Kurdistan », September 2016, Revue des deux mondes, p. 138..

On the other hand, even female fighters are victims of discrimination. While they also participated in the war against Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1993 and in the 2000s, unlike men, they were not able to receive the pensions of female veterans^[16]Darmency Delphine et Desloire Constance, « Les femmes peshmergas, héroïnes trompeuses de la société kurdé », 9 October 2014, Slate, Available at: … Continue reading. Another striking difference is the representation of women combatants, particularly in the Western media, bringing to the forefront the question of the stereotypes associated with women’s involvement in armed violence and participating in the “glamourization of war^[17]Grojean, op. cit., p. 177.”. Some media will thus focus on the physical description of female soldiers as well as the way they dress.

As Camille Boutron analyses through the example of Asia Ramzin Antar^[18]Fighter of the Women’s Protection Units during the Syrian Civil War, killed in action., described as “the Angelina Jolie of the Kurdish female fighters^[19]Boutron, Camille, et Myriam Le Basque. « Combattantes, terroristes ou victimes ? L’engagement des femmes dans la violence armée », 2019, Les Champs de Mars, vol. 33, no. 2, p. 103.”,

this representation relays the commitment of women to what it represents for the enemy. In fact, these media set aside their collective feminist military mobilization, which is far from being a new fact in the history of these women. Thus, there is still a long way to go in order to recognise women’s equal status with men, but these activists have already taken the first steps.

 

Conclusion

The example of these Kurdish female fighters helps to overcome the idea that women cannot fight. They have been key players in political and armed violence for decades. These women have participated in several conflicts and have always been recognized for their effectiveness in military operations, as illustrated by their victory in Kobané against the Islamic state. Their struggle for the self-determination of Kurdistan has allowed them to combine their feminist struggle with that of their male counterparts and to assert themselves as women and fighters as equals.

Nevertheless, women often remain victims of the patriarchal and traditional system in the regions of the Middle East where they are present, placing them under the domination of men. The struggle is far from over, but these women are proof that anything is possible. It now remains to be seen whether, in the long term, and more precisely at the end of the conflict, they will be able to consolidate their position and whether their commitment will not have been in vain, as it has often been the case^[20]As was the case after the return from the front of the Second World War combatants, women had to resume their pre-war activities after having replaced them in some of their functions.. Their example also demonstrates the need to rethink the ideology of war through the prism of gender.

To c
ite this article: Pauline Beyler, “Rethinking the role of women in war through the gender prism: Kurdish female combatants against the Islamic state”, 21.08.2020, Gender in Geopolitics Institute