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Friday, March 29, 2024

Beauty takes on the beast

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By Delil Souleiman

ARBIL—When I photograph the women fighters fighting Daesh, it reassures me that there is justice in this world. Daesh, as the Islamic State group is known around here, has mercilessly killed and raped women, children and the elderly. And here you have girls leaving everything to go and fight them. It gives me faith that there is some justice in the fight between good and evil, between light and darkness.

I love focusing on the women fighters and photographing them, recording for history how brave these women are. When you see a woman fighting, it’s a very enjoyable thing to photograph because it gives your picture beauty and shows that they can fight as well as men. There are only subtle differences between women and men fighters. When I shoot male fighters, power features more prominently in the photos. With women, there is more delicacy and beauty. I guess that’s also why I focus on them more. It makes for a more beautiful picture, adds depth to the story, and records for history how women are  on the front lines taking on the Islamists.

Female fighters have their own companies. From what I’ve seen, they are cleaner and seem more organized than their male counterparts. When you visit their quarters, you know right away that women live there, even if it’s on the battlefield, because the quarters are much cleaner and nicer. The men’s quarters are much messier.

Women and men can work together in the battlefield. Every once in awhile, you’ll of course have men joking with the women fighters, saying that women snipers aren’t as good as men at killing Daesh fighters. This usually bothers the women a lot, because they are very proud of their fighting abilities.

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There is no one single reason the women give for having decided to take up arms. I have met Yazidi fighters in Sinjar, who told me that they started fighting after losing homes and siblings to the jihadists. Daesh has been so horrible to the Yazidis, raping and killing. These women said they took up arms to regain their dignity and to take vengeance against the terrorists.

A Kurdish female fighter of the Women’s Protection Units who smiled a lot. She was killed by a Daesh sniper in Manjib. AFP

From what I have seen, there has been very little opposition within Kurdish society to the women fighters. For one thing, among Kurds, women play a more prominent role that among some Arab societies. Women are part of discussions with men in the majority of households and most families will not force their women to do anything, unlike in some other parts of Syria. I personally don’t know of any families where the girls are forced to wear the hijab. Women go to universities. And girls are often spoiled within families more than boys. So I don’t know of many who would oppose women fighters. As a general rule,  Kurdish society respects women fighters.

I don’t have any women in my family or friends who are fighting. The closest I got was one female fighter that I saw on the front at al-Hawl, who told me that she knew my family. I took some pictures of her. She laughed a lot. It was the first and the last time that I saw her. She laughed a lot. It was the first and the last time that I saw her. Afterwards, I heard that she was killed by a Daesh sniper in Manbij. That was really disheartening.  My photographs are my world and to see heroes of that world die, one after the other, is very sad. I still remember that photo that I took of her, the details of it.

When this war ends, it will be difficult for everyone, but I think especially for the women who fought on the battlefield. There is the obvious pain of having memories of the moments spent with your comrades in a war that claimed so many lives, a war in which they saw so much pain.

But   I’m also not sure most of the female fighters will be able to just go back to the lives they had before. I have met some who had stopped fighting, but they can’t remain at home much after they get back to their ‘normal’ life. They say they miss the military life, and the freedom that they had there from society and traditions. They say that on the front they were freer, they were masters of their own fate. Some whom I’ve met refuse to get married after laying down their weapons. They say they prefer to remain their own masters. 

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