Young Kurdish Women on Front Line against IS in Syria

A troop of female fighters has become a major force combating Islamic State (IS) extremists in the predominantly Kurdish region of northeast Syria. Commonly known by its Kurdish acronym, YPJ, the Women’s Protection Units is a women-only and pro-Kurdish militia set up in 2012 as a female brigade of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main Kurdish military forces in Syria. The group, in tandem with other Syrian Kurdish military forces, has been pushing west from the northeastern city of Hasakah for the past month to repel IS militants from the thin strip of land it controls along the Syrian-Turkish border. In the ranks of the YPJ, many fighters are in their early twenties or even younger when they were recruited to fight against extremist insurgencies. The women undergo weeks of military training including basic training on how to use AK-47s, heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other heavy weaponry. Nineteen-year-old Roj Anas is a sniper in