Meet the female colonel leading Kurdish forces into battle against ISIS

[RandySF]

At the southern tip of that extended front, just 80 miles away from Baghdad, is the town of Jalula. That's where Colonel Nahida Ahmed Rashid is heading on a resupply mission. She’s the highest ranking female commander in the peshmerga, the Kurdish militia that's taken over for the collapsed Iraqi army across much of the country's north.

Rashid began her military career as a teenager, fighting for for the Kurdish separatist movement. She's far from the only female peshmerga soldier — the militia boasts an all-female unit with "several hundred" members — but she's the only colonel who's a woman.

She earns the same wage as her male counterparts — just $1,000 a month. Colonels in the Iraqi army earn about twice that salary, but Rashid says money can't buy loyalty — and peshmerga fighters are loyal.

“They fight for no money, they fight for their people,” Rashid says. “I know there are some peshmerga at the front line [who] didn't get paid for months now and they're still there. We fight for this land here. What you see out there, that's our cause.”


http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-07/meet-female-colonel-leading-kurdish-forces-battle-against-isis

[freshwest]

1. K&R.

[ancianita]

2. Wow.

[awoke_in_2003]

3. "they call her by a male codename: "Mr. Muhammad."

well, not anymore, they don't. It is good to see women being treated as equals in that part of the world.

[ancianita]

4. Looks as if they've been training for months.

http://www.hapblog.com/2014/07/women-of-kurdistan-join-fight-against.html

"...The unit commander, Col Nahida Ahmed Rashid, says the unit was formed in 1996 to fight loyalists of former President Saddam Hussein.

It is made up of several hundred fighters, all volunteers. Few have seen combat, but many have been telling their commander they want to fight since Isis captured large swathes of northern and western Iraq last month.

Col Rashid says that her female troops have been training daily and are ready...

'"They've taken up arms and gone to battle to protect Kurdistan, but also to say that there's no difference between men and women," Col Rashid says.

"A lot of women are volunteering to fight with us at the moment," she adds. "They join because they want to defend other women in areas of conflict.' "